The brand name is a “bucket” that you hope to fill with goodwill and positive feelings about your product over time. The brand name is memory linkage to your product and is an identifier that distinguishes your brand from all other brands. Needless to say, the brand name is a critical marketing variable in virtually all product categories. It is most important to avoid a bad brand name, such as a name no one can remember, or a name that does not fit the product, or a name that reminds consumers of some other product. That’s why research is so vital.

Qualitative Investigations

The starting point for developing a new brand name is qualitative research. What are the most important consumer motivations related to the product category? What motives and perceptions drive the brand-decision process? How are each of the major competitive brand names perceived? What do competitive brand names communicate? Based on this qualitative understanding, what should be the communication objectives for the new brand name? Qualitative research is somewhat useful in screening large numbers of possible brand names, and helpful in refining and developing new brand-name possibilities.

Innovation Services

One approach is to let consumers help develop brand-name possibilities. Once basic consumer motivations and perceptions are understood via qualitative research, consumers can be used to help generate hundreds of brand-name possibilities. Not just any consumers will do, however. Highly creative individuals are the key. They can help create new brand names that fulfill the communication objectives. Optimize Data Analytics maintains a panel of over 2,000 highly creative people (called Imaginators®), who work in small groups, online or offline, to generate hundreds, or even thousands, of brand-name possibilities. Optimize Data Analytics’ Insights & Innovation Team then uses these brand-name suggestions as starter ideas to create even more brand names. At this point, the number of brand names is generally whittled down to 50 or 100, based on human judgment and the communication objectives. The final steps involve quantitative testing.

Brand Name Testing

The final testing would typically involve placing the new product with its new brand name in a shelf-set display, to measure which of several brand names is most effective in stimulating interest in buying and using the new product. This can also be accomplished through concept testing, or product testing, where the only difference among different sample cells is the brand name. By holding all of the other variables constant, the effect of the name itself can be measured.