| When someone tries to collate the histories behind several hundred brandnames, and then crams them into a couple of hundred pages of closely-packed type, the result isn't pretty. |
| If your experience is like mine, you'll wade through a page or two, then head back to the start of the chapter to figure out the relevance of what you're reading. |
| Like the title says, this book is the "inside story" of brandnames""how names are chosen; what makes one brandname a success and another a disaster; the legal and linguistic ramifications of brandnames; how to and how not to alter your brandname for different markets.... That's a truly fascinating subject for anyone who has even a smidgen of interest in marketing and advertising. |
| Add the credentials of the authors""Steve Rivkin owns a naming consultancy in the US and has written several books on branding, including Differentiate or Die, in association with Jack Trout; Fraser Sutherland is the author of 11 books and has been involved as an editor with "major dictionary projects"""and you've got the makings of a great book. Indeed, the publishers certainly seem to think so. The OUP website touts The Making of a Name as "the definitive book on naming" and a "must have". |
| Er, not really. Granted, this is an immensely interesting book, with the potential to have been a great one. But definitive? I don't think so. The Making of a Name is the perfect companion for anyone who's compiling a business quiz, but don't turn to it to get ahead in the market. |
| If you're a businessman looking for a suitable name for your venture, you won't find a way out here. Again, if you're a professional who helps companies find the right names, this won't help you do your job better. |
| The closest Rivkin and Sutherland come to offering advice is in a fictitious naming project for a company that wants to market worrybeads in the US. The example explains the brand image characteristics that the name should communicate and the customer profile for the product. It lists the competitors and names (of unrelated products) the client likes (Prozac, Viagra and Halcion) and dislikes (Chiclets, Hula-Hoop and Tastee-Freez). |
| And then the example ends. Just a cryptic sentence"""The profile that results from these and other methods forms the basis for generating long and short lists of names"""before the authors move on to the next topic. No explanation of the process the naming team will follow, what kind of research and market-testing it will conduct, how and why names will be chosen and discarded... nothing. |
| That accounts for two pages. The remaining 273 have interesting, often amusing, stories behind how some of the world's best brands were created. You can't separate the brandname from the brand (to their credit, the authors don't even try), so a number of anecdotes are actually potted histories of the brands and the times in which they were created. |
| When Nazi power was at its peak, Adolph Hitler""who was driven in a Mercedes""ordered the creation of a car for the common people. The first prototype rolled out in 1937 and was named Volkswagen: literally, people's car. |
| Again during World War II, "Atomic" was a favoured name for virtually every new product, be it brake fluid, washing machines, golf balls or tomatoes. The Concorde brandname played on "concord" (harmony, agreement), hinting at the Anglo-French partnership that created the supersonic aircraft. |
| Then there are the names that play on the image associated with them. Especially British pub names. The Quiet Woman displays a sign of a woman carrying her own severed head; Staffordshire public house Bull & Spectacles used to be called Bull Head until the night a drunk climbed up the front of the pub, placed a pair of glasses on the bull on the sign, and left them there. |
| Amusing, no doubt. But if you're really looking for laughs, read the chapter on "Names heard round the world". Like the book says: "In the collision between English and other languages in brand naming and marketing, the smashup can come from the use of an English brand in a foreign market, or the translation of the English brand into a foreign tongue." |
| So there's General Motors, which introduced the Chevy Nova in Latin America in the 1970s, unaware that no va is Spanish for "it doesn't go". Toyota couldn't sell the Fiera in Puerto Rico because the word translated as "ugly old woman". |
| Some of the best brands and taglines have been lost in the wilds of translation. In Taiwan, Pepsi's "Come alive with the Pepsi generation" became "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead." |
| And Perdue Chickens, famous for an ad that says "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken", found the ad was being translated in Mexico as "It takes a virile man to make a chicken aroused". |
| Jokes apart, The Making of a Name also provides an insight into just how big a role brandnames play in our lives. Some move from storeshelves and advertisements into mainstream vocabulary""xerox, cellophane, thermos, escalator, yo-yo and zipper all started life as trademarked namesçothers slip sideways into slang. |
| However much McDonald's may dislike the term, a McJob means temporary and low-paying employment. Moxie, originally an American soft drink brand, now signifies force of character and determination. And an Oreo is no longer just a chocolate cookie sandwich with a white creamy filling""it's a derisive term for a black who apes white ways. |
| THE MAKING OF A NAME |
| Steve Rivkin and Fraser Sutherland Oxford University Press Price: $28, Pages: 275 |
Explore Business Standard