How to name and differentiate your brand
As we explained in Sprint 19, a brand is a combination of feelings you intentionally (or unintentionally) evoke in your customers. Everything you and your team do will result in shaping your brand.
Being clear on which feelings you want to evoke and which ones you want to avoid is essential. In Sprint 19 exercise we asked you to write down the feelings you want to evoke in your customers and stakeholders as the foundation for developing your brand.
As you start thinking more about your brand, you might want to find a great name and logo right away. That can often be a) time consuming and b) pre-mature as you’re still in very early stages of learning and understanding your customer needs and how you will make them very happy.
So, before you start spending (and potentially wasting) hours, days or evening weeks thinking about a name, we suggest you simply start with picking a placeholder name such as “NewCo” or another name you think fits well enough for you to use without getting too attached to it being your final name. This will help you move forward with taking the really important next steps outlined below.
Creating a visual brand map
Your brand needs to first and foremost consider your target persona. After all, you want to become part of their lives. So, understanding which other brands your persona allows to be in their lives and why is an important step in getting clarity on how your brand should be similar and where you want it to be distinctly different.
You want to go back to your research notes from sprint XX and see if your potential customers have mentioned other brands they love. If you don’t have this information, you will need to collect it. These don’t necessarily need to be competitors. You want to understand why your persona invites these brands into their lives and not others. The better you understand this, the higher your chance that your brand will resonate with your target persona.
You need to list those top 7-10 brands people have mentioned. Then start writing down the feelings each of those brands evoke and which values they express through their product, customer service, packaging, marketing and communications. You want to get a really deep understanding of each of these brands.
The best way to do this, is to create what’s called a visual mood board. You ideally do this by picking a wall in your room (or you can use one of the many free digital whiteboard tools available) and start hanging up your notes and other material you will collect during your brand research process. You’re making a visual map of the branded world(s) your target person lives in.
For each brand you start by hanging up your notes on the feelings they evoke, then print their logo, their color palette, screenshots from their website and social media content, cut out ads and marketing with copywriting you find particularly unique about the brand, and any other details you can find about how they use specific customer touch points to evoke the feelings you’ve described before.
The result of this exercise is going to be a broad collection of visual assets and analytical information you extracted. If you feel you’re stuck or unclear, don’t hesitate to get back in touch with people from previous interviews or strangers within your target persona group and ask them about their impressions on specific brands.
This analysis will give you a good sense on how your brand can solidly stand on its own in a market while fitting into the lives of your persona. Remember, the goal of your business is to make a specific group so happy that they will gladly give you their money in return.
Finding a name, and what makes a good one
As we mentioned before, you will eventually want to move away from your “placeholder name” to the final name of your company. This is a very important step, and will take serious consideration based on your work from Sprint 19 and this sprint.
So, what makes a good name? There’s no one single blueprint but there are key aspects you must consider when first brainstorming and then deciding on your company’s name.
How does it make people feel: You need to make sure that your brand name evokes the feelings you want your customers to associate with your brand. To achieve that you need to go beyond the rational meaning of whatever words (existing or made-up) you choose, and also account for how specific sounds or combinations of sounds make us feel. This is something you don’t just want to decide on by yourself but be sure to first ask people you trust and then, as you narrow down your list of potential brand names, test with people from your target customer group.
Is it memorable: People get bombarded with brands all day long, so especially as a new brand you need to ensure that your name sticks out and is memorable in an instant. This goes for both how your name is pronounced and written. Nowadays, people will most likely first go to Instagram or Google to type in your name to find out more.
Can it be pronounced: Sometimes people, in an effort to secure a specific name or domain, start changing letters or pick words from other languages which can work well. However, it can also go horribly wrong. It’s critical that for your target customers your name is easy to pronounce. What’s more, you want them to love saying your brand name. The more they feel confident in pronouncing your name, the higher the chance they love saying it and tell others about your brand. Lastly, you also want to pay close attention to if and how your name could be mispronounced. This happens more than you think, and can sometimes lead to very unpleasant surprises and sometimes even to you having to rename your company.
Available domains and social media profiles: One of the most difficult parts of the naming work is finding the right URLs and social media profiles. Ideally you can find a name that’s available also as a domain and profile name. That will not always work. In which case you might need to use modifier words and/or characters (like _ or .); make sure that you choose a consistent way of naming all your domains and social profiles so it’s easy for customers to remember and find your brand online.
Does it still work as you scale: Depending on your type of business, you also need to consider if your name works in different cultures and/or languages. In order for you to check the possible scalability and adaptability of your brand name, you will need to decide on the specific cultural/language you want to test for and then work through steps 1-4 again to see how it works.
Equipped with your initial visual brand map and a short list, you can now start making some key decisions on how to position your brand in the market and in the lives of your target persona as well as ensure that all your decisions are aligned with the feelings you want to trigger in your customers.
