What's in a Name?

Much Ado is made of choosing a name for a commercial purpose, be that a stage name, a product or service name or the name of a company. This is part and parcel in the discussion many have over "Branding."

Everyone knows of successful brands that have been established and love to tell about Kleenex, Jell-o, RCA and Ford. Household names. So people seek to follow their example.

Bad idea. Branding and selecting the perfect name are Much Ado About Nothing.

Shocking words in the popular work of Branding and Finding the Best Name contest.

Let's make short work of this discussion.

First, Branding. In everything you do, you brand yourself. Over the course of your career or business you'll brand and rebrand and rebrand again. Life changes. Circumstances change. You grow. As you grow, your uniqueness may grow in unanticipated ways, and so your brand grows and changes.

Unless you have $10 million in your "branding budget" and two years or more to create a brand, branding as a singular strategy is a waste of your time. You'll brand gradually but not doing anything more than watching your image to make sure it fits your general essence.

Finding the right name is even easier. There might be a wrong name, but there certainly is no such thing as the right name. Oh, some will wax poetic how wonderful the name for their company, website, or product is, but don't listen. It's propaganda on steroid finding any imaginary facts to justify their decision.

Don't believe it? Just ask yourself what your first reaction was to names like Google, Yahoo, Vonami, Orange Soda, Novell and Omniture. How about WalMart? Some are goofy. Others rather pedestrian and dull. None are descriptive of the product or service. Orange Soda has nothing to do with Fanta or any soft drink.

Yet these are names for billion dollar companies or products. Didn't you yawn, laugh or shrug when you heard them? Imagine the board room where they first came up and some desperate promoter had study group data to prove their name, GoDaddy, was a perfect name for... a website to buy website names. Laughter permeated where boredom didn't trip over deaf ears. Yet, GoDaddy and the rest have now become names sycophants trot out to "prove" there is a right name for you.

Those same folks will say, "But they are so memorable -- you can't forget them!" Sure, now that the companies have spent millions pounding their monikers into our brains we can't drive their names out of our minds.

In Salt Lake City they had the good fortune of DELTA Airlines stepping up to buy the naming rights to their new basketball arena. Easy words in "the Delta Center." But after Delta didn't renew their rights, the rights were purchased by "Energy Solutions." At first the name was universally disliked -- naming an arena after a nuclear waste dump with a name that didn't exactly roll off the tongue. But millions of dollars later everyone blithely calls it Energy Solutions Arena.

So what's the right name for you? Forget this discussion unless you have millions to spend and years to make a name stick. Fretting over a name like Hamlet is a waste of time. Pick a name you like and can live with and tell everyone else it's a great name and get on with your business. Become a self-fulfilling prophet. If you believe it, they'll believe it.

In summary: Brand yourself without spending money and wasting time. Be mindful of the look and language in everything you do so it is consistent and purposeful. Pick a name you like and get on with making sales and yourself famous -- your lustrous name will follow.