Name Recognition

Even when a strong name emerged, Imation remained in research mode. “It wasn’t until we went into customer testing, which Nametag orchestrated for us, that ‘ForceField Scratch-Resistant Coating’ rose above the other names,” Walton says. “‘ForceField’ encapsulates the feeling we wanted our target customer to have. It tells the customer right away that their digital content will be protected.” Imation launched ForceField in January 2005.

Like Nametag, Strategic Name Development also has its own methodology. Key to that approach, says Lozito, is to “encourage the client to step back and look at potential names through the eyes of the target market.”

Strategic Name Development then identifies the appropriate naming criteria. What kind of name is the client looking for—descriptive, suggestive, offbeat? Is the product or service a brand-new, standalone offering? Or is an existing company or product in need of a new name due to an outmoded business model, a change in direction, a shift in the market, or a negative event? Perhaps the current name no longer represents its values or its mission. Changing a name can help establish a new company persona, reposition an offering, or jettison unwanted baggage. For instance, ValuJet changed its name to that of a company it purchased, AirTran, in 1996, after one of ValuJet’s planes went down in the Florida Everglades.

Once the development process begins, Lozito says, “We look at everything from morphemes, which are the smallest roots of words, to phonemes, which are the sounds of words.” He adds that “while you use a morpheme to create a word, you consider phonemes to make sure the name is sonorous. For example, generally speak-ing, a name that’s structured consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel is easier to pronounce.” Individual letters also play key roles: A plosive sound—a p or a k—evokes a sense of speed.

When the final candidates are identified, Strategic Name Development applies a proprietary tool called Name DNA Validation, which is designed to measure the emotional connection a name has to the target market. The company put that approach into practice recently when it created a new brand name for G&K Services, Inc., a Minnetonka-based uniform supplier and production-facility management company. In developing a brand for its food-safety systems, G&K sought to find a unique name it could trademark—and to make sure the new brand didn’t have any adverse meanings in both the U.S. and overseas markets. “They led us through a very methodical process in which they explored different prefixes, suffixes, roots, and stems, and combined them in creative ways,” recalls Peter Ellis, G&K’s senior vice president for marketing and business development.

Eventually, Strategic Name Development came up with the name ProSura. According to Ellis, the name “embodies what we offer to our food industry customers, which is the professional assurance that what we deliver is part of their food safety solution. That’s what ProSura stands for—professional assurance.” G&K rolled out the ProSura name in early 2005.