Notes from interview of David Placek
I recently read the interview of David Placek in a magazine. David Placek is the founder of brand-development firm, Lexicon. Since Lexicon's inception, he has helped companies come up with dozens of category defining names like Dasani, Pentium, Swiffer, Blackberry and Azure.
David says that when naming a new product, multiple factors need to be considered, like whether should it be positioned as an extension of existing brand? or as an entirely new one? The firm's ad budget is adequate? as advertising is certainly needed to raise awareness of a new brand name? Does the firm has an internal marketing team? How much it is trusted to introduce a new brand?
You need to consider what other players are on the field.
For example, when David and his team worked with Microsoft on naming its cloud offerings, the seemingly low-risk solution was Microsoft Cloud Services. But the firm was taking on Amazon Web Services, popularly known as AWS. If Microsoft Cloud Services became known as MCS, where would the differentiation be? So they came up with Azure, and it took off. AWS had a much harder time painting Azure as an imitator than it would have had portraying MCS as one.
The decision to name a brand is frequently impacted by psychological and behavioural aspects, which are significant yet difficult to measure.
One important factor to consider is if a product is one-dimensional: does it excel at only one thing? In that scenario, it may be preferable to simply say so. For example Harpic Floor Cleaner is a better name than Harpic Plus Alpha.
There are exceptions, though. Sometimes a product does its one thing so much better than anything else on the market that you have to differentiate it. For example, Coca-Cola came up with Coke Zero instead of calling it Coca-Cola Sugarless.
When naming products- Look for opportunities to simulate People's Imaginations
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