What’s in a name?

Posted by McCann on October 25, 2011

Driving to work the other day, I found myself behind a Skoda. Not knowing a whole lot about the new Skodas, I checked out the badging to see what model it was. It was called the Superb.

Now THAT is one hell of a name for a car (or for anything really). Normally when you name a car the thought process goes something like: “We want people to think our new luxury sedan really is quite superb, so we should name it something that has connotations of quality, performance and refinement. Now, what says ‘superb’ in people’s minds…”

But the Skoda guys skipped most of that and went straight to: “We want people to think our new luxury sedan is really quite superb, so let’s name it Superb”! You have to admire such a no-bullshit attitude.

It got me thinking (it’s only a 5 minute drive to work, so don’t expect Steven Hawking levels of brilliance here) about product names. And how weird it all sometimes gets.

Right now, we’re in the middle of the put-the-letter-i-in-everything phase. It started with iPod, but now there’s iSelect, iinet and about a jillion others. Sure it sounds all modern and hip now, but consider this:

Flick through any collection of logos from ye-good-olde-days (the 1950’s) and nearly every second brand name had to have ‘EZ’ in front of it. EZ-Glide, EZ-Wash, that kind of thing. And before that, ‘O’ was the popular choice: Wham-O, Jell-O and so on.

The point is, that this ‘i’ thing is going to get pretty old, pretty quick. If you’re lucky, it’ll attain retro-chic status. Freaky to think that the iPod is going to be in an antique store one day, but there you go.

If you’ve ever had to create a brand name, you know how gut-wrenchingly hard it can be. But to be honest, there’s ample evidence to suggest that it doesn’t really matter what your brand is called, just so long as you do a good job at giving it meaning.

OMO Google Uncle Tobys adidas apple Maggi Vegemite Starbucks. Say each of those names ten times to yourself, and you quickly realise how weird they really are. But they’re all very powerful brands, because of what they’ve come to represent. The name isn’t anywhere near as important as how they behave, what they say, and how they say it.

You could argue that the actual name of a brand or product is by far the least important part of its DNA. As names, apple and Google and OMO don’t really mean anything much at all. And if Google decided to launch as, I don’t know, Smash, it probably would have succeeded just as wildly.

But I suspect that cars are a whole different ballgame. I think you can really get it wrong with a car. This Skoda ‘Superb’ thing… I dunno, it’s just a bit odd. While other categories can get away with coming up with weird nonsensical names, cars are probably too much of an extension of your ego to get away with that.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that next time you have to name a product (unless it’s a car) maybe you should just let a 5 year old do it. It’ll doubtless be catchy, monosyllabic, memorable, completely illogical and probably way off-category.

Perfect.