Ries: The Law of the Proper Brand Name

the real thing
Originally uploaded by eschipul

On the subject of rules for brand names.

For readers of this blog it comes as no surprise that I am a big fan of Ries and Trout's book Positioning. And since then a continued fan with The Fall of Advertising and The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. They articulate thoughts that just make sense; logically, psychologically and sociologically.

Working in the tech sector and also being a fan of Moore's Crossing the Chasm I view brand names very much as a sociological pattern. The mavens, even if your biggest fans, must be able to COMMUNICATE that knowledge to the early majority. It is YOUR job to give them a strong brand name to communicate!

Recently rereading the 22 Immutable Laws, I found the chapter I was looking for when I wrote this post on brand naming. Here is a summary:

The Law of the Proper Name (pg 148)

1. The name should be short
2. The name should be simple
3. The name should suggest the category (flickr?)
4. The name should be unique
5. The name should be alliterative
6. The name should be speakable
7. The name should be shocking
8. The name should be personalized

So it hurts me when I see friends use bad brand names. Not my job to prevent the world from using irrelevant 10 syllable Russian sounding cryptographs on the basis of "Hey, IBM uses an acronym!", but if you must, you must. If however you have a choice, I am going to strongly suggest you follow Ries' Law of the Proper Name.

We did, which is why I love our brand name for Tendenci which one of our artists at the time, Randy Sarinas, came up with. Now if only we had a better positioning statement for Tendenci, but that is another blog post.

Comments

[Javier Avellan]

Good post, Ed. I agree, Tendenci is a good brand name... but needs stronger positioning.

I love the links to the different books you included here... thank you.

Which Russian sounding cryptograph did you mean? LOL!