Archive for May, 2008

Using Alliteration to Create a Cool Company Name

While working on a business naming project today, I noticed that three company names in the list made use of alliteration (both words starting with the same letter.) It seems the human brain enjoys this linguistic treat, evidenced by the fact that so many of today’s most famous brands make use of it. Here are just a few examples…

• Best Buy
• Coca-Cola
• Dunkin’ Donuts
• LifeLock
• PayPal

We made use of this technique with one of our clients… Park Place Garage. Not only did the name have alliteration with the two “P”s, but it also contained a double entendre (Park Place is both a place to park a car, and a name associated with high end real estate.) These types of names are “sticky” and therefore more memorable. It also helps to have the same number of syllables, which is why all five of the above examples are near perfect examples of high recall branding. PayPal and Coca-Cola also begin each word in their names with the same two letters. Now that’s brilliant. Close seconds go to…

• Blackberry
• Blockbuster
• Sir Speedy
• Pip Printing

In the case of Park Place garage, we added rhyming in the tagline to make the name stick like… well… Gorilla Glue™! The end product was Park Place… “The Ultimate Garage Space.” So in one instance you have alliteration, a double entendre and rhyming –in essence, a naming trifecta.

This can’t be achieved in every single instance, and it’s just one of a number of good business naming strategies, but it’s an effective one. So if you are looking to rename or rebrand your company, consider alliteration as one way to Supersize™ your brand’s impact.

TrickleStar… Branding a Green IT Company

Effective company naming requires creatively “tweaking” common themes so they present themselves as current, modern and relevant. For example, the rage now is all things green, environmental and eco-friendly — and many companies and products are named accordingly. So when a Malaysian-based, energy conservation company came looking for a good company brand name, we knew it would require some extra bright thinking to stand out. (Fortunately, we’re wired for that.) Their former name had been Empower Controls. That’s a good name with both a literal and double meaning. The problem with words/names such as “empower” is that they are very popular. It’s tough to get trademark clearance on these types of one word names — especially when they are closely related to the industry’s terminology (i.e. empower… power… energy, etc.)

This particular firm has a technology that can stop the insidious electrical drain caused by all sorts of electronic devices on “stand by.” It’s the energy equivalent of having a leaky faucet in each sink of your house. In our discussions the word “trickle” was used to describe this slow leakage, and the new technology would be able to shut it off with the touch of a button, saving huge amounts of energy if implemented globally. We then took the word “Trickle” and married it with another word associated with energy… “Star.” Not only does star represent energy, it also represents leadership. To be “TrickleStar” is to be the leader in the reduction and elimination of needless electrical consumption. The idea stuck and the .com domain name was available.

TrickleStar… “Conserving Energy. Improving Life.”

I expect to see some big things from this company as their products are sorely needed. They have both bright minds and bright ideas, and we here at Tungsten think that’s brilliant!