What's in a Name?

I recently had the pleasure of traveling to Ireland with my wife (one of our favorite things to do & favorite places to go). Driving around and looking for things to do, places to eat, and just find locations was difficult.

Although Ireland is very well marked or “sign posted” as they say, it is hard to find some of the basics like a grocery store or lunch on a Sunday. One thing to understand is that we didn’t have our iPhones because it is $20 for 1 MB of data and that could be an angry bill awaiting us on our arrival. Also, the GPS was basically useless because most locations didn’t list a street address and the GPS wants that street address. We also had signs like the one on the right with 10+ locations listed, some in both English and Gaelic.

One of the biggest challenges was figuring out the different brands. We quickly figured out Tesco is a grocery store and we found many global brands we recognized like McDonalds, Papa Johns, and KFC, but it was hard to decipher local brands because they didn’t describe their product/service in their name.

This re-confirmed my stance on never using 3-letter acronyms (read the 3-Lettered Monster I wrote our parent company blog in 2008) and vague terms like Johnson Corp or Johnson Industries. Although some argue with me that The Brand Constructors sounds like a construction company, not a design & brand marketing company, that’s okay with me because it’s still the right industry – the construction industry. We construct brands for the construction industry.

In conclusion, when naming your company consider what some one, possibly your best prospect ever, thinks of your name when they’ve never heard of it before. Unless you plan on advertising your way to being a household global brand, try naming your company something that relates to your industry and have some fun with it too.