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Naming & Messaging

Brand Names and Messaging Strategies That Break Through the Clutter
naming-messaging

Overview:

What is Brand Naming & Messaging?

A memorable naming and messaging strategy is one of the most powerful and immediate ways to connect with your target audience. By developing messaging that is strategically integrated with your value proposition and overall marketing efforts—as well as introducing strategic naming systems across your portfolio—we help you fine-tune your brand for growth.

Brand Naming: Memorable Names for an Integrated Communications Strategy

Why do some brand names cut through the clutter to viscerally connect with a target market while others simply go unnoticed and become irrelevant? The answer lies in how words or word parts are used to tell a story, through both thought and emotion, to deliver a differentiated idea in a new and unexpected way.

We perfectly blend science and art to create strategically relevant and memorable brand names. The names we develop transcend borders, languages, and cultures, are legally protectable, and most importantly communicate the brand’s unique positioning—its story. Through custom naming systems, we organize and communicate complete portfolios of products and services to make customer choice clear and easy.

Brand Messaging: Communicating A Value Proposition to Set Your Brand Apart

Brand messaging refers to the underlying value proposition conveyed—and language used—in communicating content. Once a strategic positioning or value proposition has been identified, it needs to be expressed in a way that is both consistent with the brand essence and compelling to the target audience. It enables buyers to relate to the brand by inspiring them, persuading them, and ultimately making them want to buy a product or service.

Like other forms of communications—visual or verbal—brand messaging is part strategy, part creative. In developing strategic messaging, we use a variety of frameworks, including brand story, messaging hierarchies, and communication briefs, to ensure the transition from strategy to creative is seamless and the essence of the brand positioning is not lost. From there, we can either create market-ready brand copy or hand it off to an agency with the tools it needs to develop copy.

Naming Strategies

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Our Process

Questions
Addressed

  • Is the offering’s positioning fully thought-through and well-articulated?
  • Are product and marketing teams strategically aligned?
  • Is the current naming approach and/or system limiting or no longer relevant?

Typical
Challenges

  • Strategic intent is often sacrificed in favor of creative or “catchy” execution
  • The team creating messages/copy is not up-to-speed on the brand positioning
  • Messaging needs to be executed consistently across all touchpoints—including digital

Ensuring
Success

  • Ensure there is agency and team continuity in the transition from strategy to messaging
  • Use strategic frameworks and templates that help establish consistency across contexts
  • Avoid groupthink and diluting brand messages to the “lowest common denominator”
Get to Know More
Brand Story

How to Bring Brand Positioning to Life Through Story

Storytelling in the World of Business

Download the Guide

Naming & Messaging Case Studies

Deciphering the Role of “The Trusted Advisor”

Deciphering the Role of “The Trusted Advisor”

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Brand story: Defining a Common Thread to Unify

Brand story: Defining a Common Thread to Unify

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Crafting a Brand Architecture for a Non-profit

Crafting a Brand Architecture for a Non-profit

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Discovering the Upside of Intelligent Risk-taking

Discovering the Upside of Intelligent Risk-taking

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Uncovering Unmet Needs to Enhance Brand Experience

Uncovering Unmet Needs to Enhance Brand Experience

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Designing a Naming Convention to Drive Adoption

Designing a Naming Convention to Drive Adoption

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Assessing and Leveraging the Impact of Co-branding

Assessing and Leveraging the Impact of Co-branding

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Building a Brand Architecture from the Outside-in

Building a Brand Architecture from the Outside-in

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Naming with the Right Balance of Form and Function

Naming with the Right Balance of Form and Function

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Positioning a Premium Brand in a Commodity Category

Positioning a Premium Brand in a Commodity Category

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Let’s get in touch!

Naming & Messaging FAQs

Brand naming strategies can vary widely, but they generally involve creating names that are memorable, meaningful, and capable of standing out in a crowded marketplace. This might include using metaphorical names that evoke a vivid image (e.g., Amazon), experiential names that convey what it feels like to use the product (e.g., Safari), or descriptive names that immediately convey the nature of the product or service (e.g., QuickBooks). The strategy should align with the brand’s positioning and be adaptable across various cultures (if necessary).

Key attributes of a strong brand name include clarity, memorability, ease of pronunciation, and the ability to convey the brand's positioning and essence. Beyond these fundamentals, a successful brand name should ideally be adaptable across various media platforms and marketing channels, ensuring it works well both online and offline. Needless to say, the name also needs to be legally available for use, and ideally unique enough to be registered and protected legally.

Finally, a good brand name should facilitate brand extension and growth by being broad enough to encompass future product lines or services without being so vague that it loses its meaning. This helps ensure that a name is not only effective at launch, but also continues to support the brand’s strategic goals as it evolves.

It is important to intentionally plan for the way a brand communicates its unique value proposition and personality through its verbal messaging. Here are a few guiding principles to follow:

  • Strategic messaging should include a value-based communication framework that can be deployed across all stakeholder interactions.
  • Strategic messaging should communicate product value to customers by describing the solution to a problem.
  • Effective messaging distills the most important points about a brand into themes that together communicate the totality of the brand.
  • Strategic messaging should clearly articulate the brand's promise and stimulate desire for the company’s products or services
  • Effective messaging uses words that customers and prospects can easily understand (i.e., avoids jargon).

Brand messaging involves a comprehensive set of messages that define what the brand stands for, its benefits, and its value proposition to different stakeholders. This is a broad narrative that provides depth and context. Taglines, conversely, are short, memorable phrases designed to succinctly convey the essence of the brand in a compelling and relatable way, often capturing the core message in a catchy manner.

Brand voice includes the flow of the brand’s words, its particular use of language, and the tone and manner with which it speaks directly to stakeholders. A message is what a brand says; its voice is how it is said. 

Brand voice is important because it helps a brand consistently stand out from the crowd and makes for more compelling and engaging storytelling and content. It also helps a brand be more human and relatable.