In 1998, a prospective employee did not come to Ogilvy for a job because she was asked to meet a person called Madhukar Sabnavis. She felt a person with such a name must be pretty terrifying!
Wafah bin Laden struggles to get acceptance in both the West and in Saudi Arabia. The West hates her for her surname; the Saudis hate her for her American values.
When a multinational agency wanted to move a section of its office to Lower Parel in the early 90s, the CEO quite smartly renamed the area Upper Worli. Parel was a mill area while Worli was a posh, upper-class locality. The new name suddenly made the inevitable shift a little more palatable.
When you have a name like Bachchan after your first name and have a heritage with it, suddenly it becomes a passport to get your first break with a big film maker and then get repeat breaks over and over again -- despite a spate of flops, all because of the name. In the past in Bollywood, many stars like Dilip Kumar, Meena Kumari and Madhubala changed their names just to make themselves more easily acceptable to a larger audience.
So to say what's in a name in the brand-building process is perhaps not giving the brand name its due. And to say it is everything is not giving the other elements of the process of brand building their due. A rose by any other name may smell just as sweet but would not be a rose!
The name is the beginning of the branding process and branding is a journey. A brand comprises the name and all the other associations built on it through the product, packaging and communication. A good start helps but how the journey is undertaken finally decides.
Yet as often one has to live with a name for life (as most of us do with our personal names), it has always seemed worthwhile to agonise over to get an appropriate name that all stakeholders are comfortable with.
Nonsense names give the marketer and advertising agency the flexibility to craft its character and personality the way they want. While "Nike" is the Greek goddess of victory, this is perhaps known to very few people and it is the attitude the brand represents that makes it desirable -- and that is what communication has layered onto it. So is the same for a number of other brands like "Lux" or "Liril" or "Chiklets" or "Hutch".
However, it must be recognised that in the Indian context, an "Indian" name does help to build affinity while an "English" name could help to build aspiration cues to a larger market. In this context, "Peter England" as a name is quite interesting.
When the brand offered good ready-to-wear shirts at an affordable price, the name gave the right premium cues to make it a label the average middle class "tailored shirt" buyer could wear with pride -- especially in a ready-to-wear world bombarded with western sounding names.
Similarly when Asian Paints launched a premium emulsion brand in the early 1990s to compete with western brands like Berger and ICI, the name "Royale" gave the brand instant luxury cues even before the consumer saw any other elements of the brand mix. Interestingly, neither forms of brand names are limiting in any way!
Sometimes good brand names can add intrinsic value to the product being promoted and make the task of the other elements easier. "Taaza" tea is a case in point -- it instantly communicates "freshness", a value consumers seek from tea. Or Tiger tea, which by name connotes strength and becomes the quickest shorthand for the brand.
"100 Pipers" conjures up naturally pictures of Scotland to a normal consumer and it adds to the mystique and strength of the brand.
However, such names carry with them the constraints or limitations of the brand having to operate in a territory defined by the label attached. And any attempt to shift tracks from natural associations with the name would require special effort.
So is there much ado about brand names? All that needs to be done at the start of the branding process is to find a name that is easy to pronounce, ensure that there are no negative meanings if the brand is being offered in multi-lingual markets and then build values around it. In fact, in history, pronunciation has also not been a barrier.
Titan has been pronounced as "Teeetaan" and Hutch has been variously pronounced as "Haj" and "Hootch". Yet both brands have managed to build large franchises, living with the mispronunciations. Yet it cannot be disputed that a name that is comfortable on the tongue can help a brand in its initial years.
But the challenge in future is going to be bigger. With the commoditisation of brands, the fragmentation of the media, and the reducing effectiveness of every rupee of communication budgets, every element in the brand-building mix will be expected to stretch and work harder in building a distinct brand positioning.
And a good name can give a brand a "head start" rather than just a "start", as has been the rule in the past. Just as on the athletic field more and more science is going into helping the runner get the momentum to start with -- better shoes and better posture -- the time has come for brand builders to get a name that can give the brand that extra push in the market.
"French Connection" in the UK is a great example in this context. When the brand was re-launched in 1997, it was just a middle-of-the- road brand appealing to diverse audience with little fashion connotations.
The drama of the re-launch started with the name -- someone very cleverly recombined the initials of the company to come up with an interesting (and "unpronounceable") name, FCUK.
And the name was a great starting point for a brand with an attitude -- one of being unpredictable, rebellious, daring, prepared to be different, not anti-establishment but independent-minded, original, not a fashion slave, does not want to be told what to wear or how to wear.
Not surprisingly, it captured the imagination of a younger audience. The name then inspired the creative to spawn a series of campaigns -- fcuk fashion and fcuk advertising. And a third with headlines like "french connection me", "french connection someone", "french connection yourself", and "what the french connection".
Besides striking the right attitude, these campaigns created enough extra noise through the publicity they generated -- from the work and from the banning the first two campaigns received. And thus a name gave a brand lot more than just an identifier it is often associated with!
"Kama Sutra" is another very interesting name for a brand of condoms. Coming from the Indian social fabric, there is a story and a myth relevant to the category that the brand name communicates and so offers a great starting point for the branding process. Whether the name came by design or by instinct one doesn't know, but the fact is it's a powerful start!
The challenge for marketers and communicators alike in the future is to get into the fabric of society and unearth or define names that can give a head start to the branding process.
Something worth thinking about.
Madhukar Sabnavis is Country Manager, Discovery, with Ogilvy and Mather, India. The views expressed are his own