Before this summer, I maintained an absolutely objective attitude towards the name. It was just a title decided by others and did not represent the thing itself.

My name comes from my parents. It is an expectation and does not represent personal will and aesthetics.

The name of the product comes from the boss. It is a preference and does not mean that the product itself is good or bad.

In the summer, I first encountered an online psychology course. The teacher gave an example and said that names have a great influence on the shaping of personal personality.

For example, majestic names such as Zedong and Zhenhua have been burdened with such expectations since childhood. The psychological implication is that you have to make yourself worthy of this name, right?

Then I encountered an advertising and marketing book "Positioning", a must-read list for industry veterans, and it actually mentioned naming.

The name is like a hook, hanging the brand on the product ladder in the minds of potential customers. In the age of positioning, the only important marketing decision you can make is what to name your product.

From this point of view, a good name given by your parents will help your luck in life, and a good name for your brand will help your business prosper.

The former is still a metaphysics to me, but the latter can be explained briefly through the sincerity after reading the book.

1. If you still don’t believe the importance of names in life and death

What you see is what you want to see. For those who have not personally experienced it, this is a pretentious statement. The only thing that can convince Xuanxu is living cases.

Bad names for airlines

The four largest airlines in the United States are United Airlines, American Airlines, Trans World Airlines, and... Eastern Eastern Airlines

To borrow an airline advertising phrase, do you know "the second largest passenger airline among all airlines in the free world"? Unfortunately, China Eastern Airlines consistently ranks fourth in passenger surveys.

Because Eastern Airlines is a regional name, it is in a different category in the minds of potential customers than the big national names like American and United.

China Eastern Airlines has tried everything from renovating the planes to improving the quality of the food and dressing up the flight attendants, and of course spending a lot of money on advertising, but it still doesn't help.

As psychologist David Shepherd said, Cyril and John, even if people don't know the person with these two names, they still think Cyril is a sneaky guy, and John is a trustworthy person.

Akron's twins

Goodrich is similar to Goodyear, a large company in the same industry. Goodyear can reinvent the tire, but it benefits most from it. Goodyear.

Goodrich was the first company to sell steel-belted radial tires in the United States. But a few years later, when asked which company produced this tire, 56% of buyers said it was Goodyear; and the company did not sell this tire in the domestic market.

Goodrich should adopt this strategy: launch a good brand and eventually use it as the name of the company.

2. How to choose a well-known name?

In the past, there were few product types and the amount of information dissemination was small, so names were not as important as they are now.

Nowadays, it is very difficult for you to get into the eyes of target people in the massive information flow, let alone occupy their minds. Starting the positioning process means finding a blue ocean position for your product in the existing red ocean.

For example, 7-Up's positioning is "non-Cola". When the competition between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola was in full swing, the success of the "non-Cola" positioning has been proven by history.

Choose a name that can start the positioning process and tell potential customers about the main features of the product

eg. Head & Shoulder's

But don't go too far , the meaning of the name should not be too close to the connotation of the product, like a general name that applies to all products in the category, rather than a trademark of a specific brand.

Choosing a weighty, descriptive name that is close to universal can prevent competitors from following suit and squeezing into your territory

A good name is the best guarantee for long-term success. People was a great name for a gossip magazine, but Us was in trouble.

3. When can you use meaningless names?

Coca-Cola, Kodak and Xerox are very successful names in their respective fields, but they are meaningless. How to explain?

A company that is the first to enter people's minds with a new product or idea easily becomes famous. No matter if its name is Lindbergh, Smith or Rumpelstiltskin.

Only if your product is brand new and urgently needed by consumers, and the name is the first to enter people's minds, you are qualified to give a meaningless name.

This is a good explanation for the fact that the endless new things in the Internet era are all accompanied by a weird name, but they still go a long way.

4. How to avoid inappropriate names

The minefields of names generally include the following types

Ambiguity and ambiguity

According to According to the law that distinctive names are better than generic names, "Time" and "Fortune" are more successful brand names than "Times" and "Business Week".

(Of course, due to the barriers to entry in the magazine industry, generic brand names will not show disadvantages; the latter two are almost as successful brands as the first two)

But Time As a weekly news magazine, the name is not as good as the more general Newsweek. It is also vague and ambiguous, and the Times can be regarded as a trade magazine for the watch industry.

Obsolescence

Names also become obsolete, leaving room for keen competitors. Today's Playboys would never call themselves "Playboy," creating an opportunity for a new magazine aimed at young men. Maxim was selected as the best magazine of the year by Advertising Age.

Too much is not enough

Be careful when naming low-calorie and low-price products and not go too far in suggesting their benefits. Once the meaning is too explicit, it will drive away potential customers.

NO-Cal soft drinks will never be a big success. Who goes to a restaurant and asks for a diet Coke? It is easy for people sitting at the table next to think: "That fat guy."

A bad name can also become a good name

Margarine has always been regarded as fake butter, psychologically It is deceptive and conceals the origin of the product. Potential customers will speculate that there must be some bad ingredients in margarine.

So, what was margarine supposed to be called? Might as well call it soy butter. Soy butter is real butter, except it's made from soybeans instead of milk.

5. Nameless Trap

The so-called nameless refers to the situation where acronyms are used instead of full names.

"I want to go to LA" Why do people call Los Angeles LA, but few people call New York NY?

There is a principle here called pronunciation of acronyms. Gen-er-al E-lec-tric has six syllables, so most people use the two-syllable G-E.

Most people would not use acronyms without pronunciation convenience. New York and NY are two syllables, so NY is often used in writing but rarely used verbally.

Customers tend to be more pronunciation oriented when choosing a company name, but their perception of the company they are talking about is different. The company is visually oriented and goes to great lengths to enhance the visual impact of its name without considering how it sounds.

There are 44 "unnamed" companies on the Fortune 500 list: AMP, AON, AT&T, BB&T... The hand-oriented abbreviation that initially was used to save files and save typing time will eventually become Success symbol. Such as IBM, P&G, 3M, etc. If you select the companies immediately following the companies with abbreviated names in the top 500 list, Rockwell International, National Steel, etc., are obviously more famous.

The average awareness rate of survey respondents for companies with "abbreviations" is 49%, while the average awareness rate for companies with "full names" in the comparison group is 68%, which is 19 percentage points higher.

What about FDR and JFK (Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John Fitzgerald Kennedy)?

The exception to this principle is that once you become the best in the world and your reputation spreads far and wide, there will be no ambiguity in abbreviating your name.

Finally, the mind runs on the ears

"The mind runs on the ears, not the eyes"

Before you can store images in your mind, you must first Convert it into sound. This does not mean that images or pictures cannot be used, but the purpose of using these images is to let words enter people's minds.

The main reason for the constant mistakes in name selection is that company managers live in a sea of ??paper every day: letters, memos, reports. It's easy to forget that the mind works by the ears. To say a word, we first have to convert letters into sounds. This is why beginners' lips move when they read.

It can be said that this theory is one of the essences I gained from this book.

As a reading player, I am very reluctant to receive a lecture or valuable talk show through audio or video. The reason is very simple, it is too inefficient. The time spent on audio and video is much greater than directly reading an article and organizing the content into a transcript.

Thinking from the perspective that the mind operates by the ears, it seems that a certain advertising slogan and contact number broadcast over and over again on the radio have entered my brain deeper than printed promotional materials. It’s time to think about capturing people’s hearts with a cadence of voice and colorful body language.

Chapter 9 The Power of Names, Chapter 10 The Trap of Namelessness