Creating a Branded Brand
It always amazes me how brand names can become the actual name for a product, or how a well known and liked service can be turned into a universally understood verb. For example, when I want to search for a product on the web I tell people to ‘google’ it. What I mean is, use a search engine to get the information you want but what I say is ‘google it’, spreading the brand name while identifying and endorsing the service. Even if the person I speak to doesn’t use google as their primary search engine it is in the forefront of their mind and most likely the first phrase that comes up when they tell someone else to search for information on the web.
If you can create a branded brand you will forever hold the market share of your field. Ipod is the best example. Nobody at Apple ever refers to the Ipod as Apple’s MP3 player. MP3 players have been around for years, I was recently in Taiwan and I cannot tell you how many different brands and variations there actually are on the scene – hundreds maybe thousands. Yet even people who own rival brands of MP3 players refer to them as Ipods. The product has surpassed being a brand name and has become branded as the actual product.
Naming your product or brand can have a big impact on this sort of word-of-mouth endorsement. ‘Go yahoo it,’ doesn’t have quite the same ring as ‘google it’. ‘Sony’s MP3 player’ isn’t as easy to say as my ‘Ipod’. When you are thinking about naming your product or service have these things in mind. How will your service become a verb? How will your product brand the brand?
You don’t realized how much brand names have an impact on your vocabulary till you go to another country. I for one recently tried to find ‘Saladas’ (a brand of Australian crackers) in an American store. It had been used so often as a branded brand that I didn’t realize that the generic name for them was saltine biscuits. Very embarrassing! If you can find a way to make your brand the name of a product, do. If you can find a way to make your service into a verb do it. The best way to begin is to start using it yourself, in every conversation and piece of literature you produce.
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