4 Approaches to Mergers & Acquisitions Naming
The feeling towards the mergers and acquisitions market seems optimistic for 2014, with most investment banks reporting growing numbers of deals in the pipeline. These landmark events for firms aim to create synergies, and brand value is a crucial factor, however only around half of these attempts actually succeed. One of the most common reasons for failure is conflict between the two entities, and it’s no surprise this is linked to the biggest killer for brands – brand confusion. Clear,…
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How nicknames can damage or benefit a brand, Chevy vs. “Fix it again, Tony!”
Fiat entered the American market in 1908. At the time, it wasn’t yet known as “Fix it again, Tony!”; the nickname was actually crafted some 60 years later in the 1970s and 1980s when some Fiat owners reportedly encountered problems with their cars. From then on Fiat got a reputation for making unreliable and poor quality cars. The nickname “Fix it again, Tony!” was coined as an acronym for Fiat and intended as a joke. However it stuck, to the…
Read more >A rose by a different name…?
Would a rose smell as sweet if called by a different name? The Nomen UK creative team is an eclectic group of individuals with different talents, coming from all walks of life and of ages ranging from the young to the not-so-young. We have in common a passion: creating great brand names for whatever project comes our way. What’s in a word? Words are powerful tools and a knowledge and understanding of words is essential to our task. The word…
Read more >Controversial?
As consumers, it is not often we stop and think about the name of a product we are buying or the company we are buying from, especially in the case of familiar brands. On reflection, and particularly taking a name out of context, we might notice some strange choices. For example, have you noticed that Christian Dior’s perfume range called ‘Poison’ is not exactly an enticing name for a liquid product? And have you ever really thought about Richard Branson’s…
Read more >The importance of trademark registration
A brand can be considered as many things from several perspectives. A brand is a construction of customer sentiments. A brand is a value on a balance sheet. But a brand is not a legal entity unless it has trademark protection. If your name is not registered as a trademark, there may be a number of restrictions on how you can use it. For example, many people enjoy using a ‘gmail’ account. But, in certain European territories, you can only…
Read more >Names and linguistic screening
It is well-known that the Chevy Nova was a failure in Spanish-speaking markets because “nova” translates as “no-go”. That’s not the kind of message you want to transmit in a car name. It may be well-known, but it’s also untrue – the translation is inaccurate and, in any case, the car was a success. But that doesn’t mean that linguistic howlers don’t occur all the time. There are three types of error to avoid. Firstly, the inadvertent use of words…
Read more >Naming a car with true character
When you hear a product name and immediately recognise the underlying brand, you know you’re witnessing a highly effective naming strategy. That’s how it is with a sports car beginning with the letter ‘E’: it’s a Lotus. It has been so for decades and it was central to Nomen’s brief to create a name for the first new Lotus model since the Elise in 1995. But the strategy’s longevity is a double-edged sword and presents two significant naming challenges. Firstly,…
Read more >The trouble with words
The trouble with words is that they don’t mean anything. People mean things – words are simply the form most commonly chosen by people to try to get their meaning into the mind of someone else.But when I hear a word, do I hear the same as you? Consider a simple word like “green”, or choose something a little more controversial, like the word “good”. The word I say is not always what it seems… yet words tend to pass…
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