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What's in a name? Billions of dollars if it's a company or brand name

Names like Coca Cola. Mercedes Benz, Google are worth billions of dollars.
A company or brand name has equity that produces revenue for any business, regardless of it's size. That's why it pays to invest some time and money in selecting a name that will start producing dividends as quickly as possible.

A company or brand name is more than just a logo or identification. It's a projection of the entire image, personality and spirit of the company and the positive potential experience customers will enjoy using their products. This "image" combined with customers' perceptions and actual experience with the company and its products builds the equity that helps generate direct and indirect revenue for your business.

In developing a name and logo, there are various "textbook rules". But for every rule, there's an exception. That's why once you know the rules, it very often pays to break them. Just look at companies like Google and Yahoo.

The image your company or product wants to project is the first thing to consider. Your industry, products, competition and your customers are important elements in determining what your ideal image should be.

Begin by asking a very simple question "What is the single most important thing we want to come to mind when they see or hear our name?" Write down a list of the words and images that come to mind.

Your initial list will probably contain some interesting and conflicting words and images. It could include "cutting edge", "established", "corporate", "elegant" , "friendly" and "customer-focused". But that's ok. The idea is to generate words, images and ideas that will help decide on a name that will be right for your product or company.

At this stage, it pays to do a competitive analysis. List your major competitors by name along with the image their name brings to mind. This helps highlight opportunities to develop a unique name and image that stand out from the competition.

Strong Brand names are unique and memorable. Names like Google, Yahoo, Jet Blue, are unique, easy to remember and tend to build awareness and equity quickly. Mundane, more generic names like All-American, Ace or Global aren't unique and are easily confused with one another.

The name should also be simple and easy to spell. Names that are spelled differently than they sound confuse people. It's also important to have easy to spell names to make Search Engine Marketing more effective.

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