A name is the most important identifier of a person, a brand, state, a village, a business, a nation, a pet etc. The name implies race, era, societal culture and religion. No wonder, people take time to name their children, their business, their pet, their memoirs etc. Names have meaning and they do suggest character, traits and acumen of a person/business/state/nation/ product. Each name has power, people work hard to make the name outstanding and influential, and it must be valued.

Beyond just a memorable logo and tag line, good branding adds to the value of a company. It provides employees with direction and motivation, and attracts more and more customers easily. A brand represents the total sum of people’s awareness and experience of an individual, a company, a product, a school, college, a university, a hospital, a park, an auditorium, a nation, a river, a mountain, a flower and infinite things. There are countless components which go in creating a successful brand.

In this article I will be discussing some examples of how names were created of certain brands.

Do you know that Pepsi was named after the medical term for indigestion? The inventor of Pepsi, Caleb Davis Bradham, originally wanted to be a doctor, but due to some crisis in his family, he left medical school and became a pharmacist instead, according to the company website. His original invention, identified as “Brad’s Drink,” was made from a mix of sugar, water, caramel, lemon oil, and nutmeg. Three years later, Bradham renamed his drink, which he believed helped digestion; so he named it as “Pepsi-Cola,” taken from the word upset stomach, meaning indigestion.

Panera Bread Company is a chain store of bakery-café fast casual restaurants in the United States and Canada. Panera combines two words “pan” and “era.” According to Panera’s Facebook page, the chain store’s name has Latin and Spanish roots. In Spanish, “pan” means bread and “era” means age or time. So put together, Panera means “age of bread.” And, in Latin it means breadbasket.

Google owes its name to a typographical error. Its name came forward from a brainstorming session at Stanford University. Founder Larry Page was coming up with ideas for a massive data-index website with other graduate students, according to a Business Insider report. One of the suggestions was “googolplex” one of the largest describable numbers. The name ‘Google’ came about after one of the students accidentally spelled it wrong. Larry Page thought of keeping the name as erroneously spelled and registered his company with this name.

McDonald is named after two brothers who ran a burger restaurant. Raymond Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, used to sell milkshake machines. Once he met brothers Dick and Mac McDonald, who ran a burger restaurant in San Bernardino, California. The McDonald brothers bought several of Kroc’s Multimixers and he was so impressed by their burger restaurant that he became their agent and set up franchises around the US. Years later, he bought rights to the McDonald’s name.

Adidas is not an acronym for “All Day I Dream about Soccer”; it’s a fallacy of many people. It turns out the athletics-apparel brand is named after its founder, Adolf Dassler, who started making sport shoes when he came back from serving in World War I, according to the LA Times. The name combines his nickname, Adi, and the first three letters of his last name, Dassler.

Hans Wilsdorf, the founder of Rolex, the expensive watches wanted a brand name that could be understood and pronounced in any language. He tried combining the letters of the alphabet in every possible way. He thought of hundreds of permutations and combinations by setting and fixing the alphabets. But, none of them felt quite right. One morning, while riding on the upper deck of a horse-drawn omnibus along Cheapside in the City of London, the name “Rolex” struck in his mind and ears.

The name LG came from the merger of two companies, Lucky and Goldstar, the acronym of both companies. It was officially decided to use the brand name as LG.  It is a conglomerate in South Korea. When the company started marketing its products to the west and English speaking countries the company rethought about its name using the same acronym as “Life’s Good” as a backronym (an acronym deliberately formed from a phrase whose initial letters spell out a particular word or words).

Nike is the Greek goddess of victory and she often represented with wings. Her presence symbolized victory and she was often depicted as sitting next to Zeus, the Greek god. The swish designed signifies her flight.

SONY the leading manufacturer of electronics products for the consumer and professional markets is headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Sony comes from the Latin word ‘Sonus’ which means sound. And, ‘Sonny’ is a slang word used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster. The company was named after bright youngsters – Sonny boys working in sound and vision. The name Sony was also chosen because it could be pronounced easily in many languages.

Vodafone was formed under the Racal telecommunications brand and as was launched in January 1985 under the name Racal Vodafone Holdings Ltd. The name Vodafone is derived from three words which are of significantly important for the industry. The short explanation could be described with the naming formula voice, data and phone. The idea of this name came from Saatchi & Saatchi (the advertising agency) and one of the company’s original directors. It was the agency’s idea of spelling phone as “fone” which at first wasn’t accepted very well by the then CEO of Vodafone. Eventually he pondered over it and accepted the name. This is how the name “Vodafone” was born.

Brand building requires sincerity: Like we individuals have our personalities, style and image; brands also have their personalities. Brands make a personal connection with their customers. Just as people have values, goals, beliefs and even flaws, so do organizations. Customers connect with the brands if only they like them. The connection grows when brands deliver what is promised. Customers go by their own experience.

Organizations need to work on delivering exactly what they communicate regarding their brands. They need to decide on their brand’s personality traits and deliver them as promised.  Over-promising and under-delivering turns out to be short-term marketing strategy.  In fact, it’s often cheaper and easier to create hype, than providing genuine substance.

Initial marketing hype can create little success, but after it fades, organizations fall flat and struggle to retain customers and struggling for their existence. The core issue in branding exercise is maintaining the brand authenticity. And what is a brand? It’s a name!

Corporate communication plays a key role in how investors, suppliers, employees, competitors, government and the general public perceive a company. The corporate communication department often reports directly to a company’s chief executive officer, while serving as advisers in managing a company’s reputation. They help firm’s leaders prepare for media interviews, develop messages to deliver to investors and employees and suggest new initiatives to keep a company ahead, to make its existence prominent and keeping its communication up-to-date and progressive with its stakeholders. Corporate communication is a management function or department, like finance, operations, logistics or marketing dedicated to the distribution of information to key constituencies, and the implementation of corporate strategy as well as the development of information for a variety of purposes for the organization.

It consists of both Internal and external communication. Internal communication is the process of exchanging information among the people of different level or internal participants within the organization. It is directly linked to the process of human resources. It connects the employees with the company’s larger picture; reminding them on regular intervals regarding the company’s goals & objectives; letting the employees know about the company’s achievements, advising on corporate strategy, talent management, employee engagement, business strategies, change management, business development, CSR, motivating & empowering employees through various developmental schemes. Further letting the employees learn about the new initiatives taken by the company, training and development of the employees, mentoring and business reviewing etc.

And, external communication is the process of keeping the external participants informed about organization’s well being and how the organization wants the external participants to get involved with their business.

Both internal and external communication mediates heavily on business and its positive influence for furthering the organization. It also holds an important spot in the organization structure. If effectively used, corporate communication can certainly help the organization in overcoming some choppy issues and curtailing the bad media effect. The leaders need to understand and appreciate this and should make use of this level-playing strategic tool for utmost benefit. It helps reducing and ignoring mundane and typecasted messages by reducing the uncomfortable gaps with its stakeholders. It’s no longer a mere ornamental corporate mouthpiece.

Corporate communication consists of some complex responsibilities, such as:

Rapport with media: Corporate communication managers are friendly with the media at large. It involves write-ups on various happening in the organization such as appointment of new CEO, new products being introduced by the organization, CSR initiatives taken, diversification opted if any, association of the firms with various bodies etc, etc. This department responds to the media’s queries. Corporate communication department watches over planning for news conferences, including selecting the site for an event, arranging for banners and other graphics to be displayed at the event, preparing folders of information to distribute to the media and preparing executives to speak at news conferences.  It assists the spokes person with relevant data and organizes the spokes person’s interviews in various media vehicles such as radio, TV, newspapers, websites etc. In short, this department is well associated with the media by devising strategies to do away with any sort of wrong propaganda.

Public Relation: The department is responsible to maintain healthy and sociable relationships with customers by responding to inquiries from them. This task involves producing newsletters, brochures and other printed materials designed for the general public. It also manages the company’s website and social media presence, which includes monitoring what customers and clients are saying about the company on social networking websites and responding to imprecise posts if any. The department is extremely alert to wade off any defaming posts on social media. They respond directly to calls and emails from citizens and customers with questions about a company’s plans or activities. They arrange for speakers from the company to make presentations to local community groups and may facilitate group tours to the company’s works.

We can no longer take social media lightly. It isn’t just an online space for posting holiday snaps, pseudo-philosophical opinions or pictures of pets, friends and family functions.  Since the use of online social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have become widespread, businesses have to incorporate these communication channels into their marketing mix else,  they might get left behind. It has become an important tool to increase brand awareness, to promote products or services, to educate, entertain, recruit and collect data about current and prospective clients.

These days corporate blogging has evolved its presence much more than ever imagined. It isfar beyond the idea of personal journaling.  Corporate are using blogging as a flexible tool to connect with stakeholders at large. The websites of organizations are supported by multiple blogs subtly discussing the organization’s mottos, goals, and philosophies. Blogs display the products and services of the organization in more than pink health.  You may be surprised at the diversity of blogs in these examples; Caterpillar, Starbucks, Marriot, General Electric, Sony, Lever, P&G all of these and many more companies are making best use of blogs.

Look at the blog of Fiskars and you will be amazed to see how in the world you create passion for scissors!!  Fiskars has done it in one of the most creative blogs in the corporate world. The company took help from four scrapbook fanatics who demonstrate their love of crafting with scissors. It’s beyond imagination, that some such idea would work wonders. I tell you friends, marketing is all about imagination. This blog is one of the greatest marketing wonders I have ever seen.

Similarly, Southwest Airlines has used blogging very well. It is one of the world’s best-known corporate blogs. It’s also one of the most honest blogs. It carries good, bad, ugly experiences of people with airlines. The blog talks about travel and the people who make it happen. This is the anti-corporate-press-release blog. Southwest has wisely used its blog to connect with its employees regarding what passengers want from the airline, what their expectations are.

I have to mention here how Mastercard and Paypal have leveraged social media in innovative, creative way that has shored up their businesses. So coming back to corporate communication departments – they are responsible for using social media in their favor.

Communication in adversity: In anyevent which threaten public safety or a company’s reputation, corporate communicators need to swoon in as guards. They need to immediately advise CEOs and senior leaders how to manage the crisis. Candidates specially trained in the issues unique to crisis communication helps corporate communicators prepare for events such as chemical spills, blasts, violence in the workplace, an accidental death on the job, murder, layoff announcements and allegations against company’s wrongdoing. They closely guard the company’s reputation by keeping a friendly rapport with the employees to understand their pulse and develop crisis communication plans before disaster such as strikes or layoffs. The corporate communication department needs to work with attorneys, government, regulators, politicians, police, and magistrates. In case any accidents take place they need to respond immediately by rushing the injured employee to the hospitals, getting the aid of insurance etc.

Thus the department works friendly with the in-house people, external stakeholders, government, police, hospitals, insurance companies, entertainment agencies and media, NGOs so on and so forth. With the increase in importance of communication in business, the status of Public Relations (PR) has changed fundamentally. PR has transformed itself and has rechristened as Corporate Communication. It has become one of the pivotal functions in the management. It is required for a cohesive and joint purpose and direction. In the big, bad world putting the right foot forward is a must for any organization. Communication today binds the company with the outside as well as inside stakeholders. The world economy has opened its doors to the global market. This demands an organization strong in foundation, leadership, clear business focus with strategies, motivated skill-sets and adaptable management.

If you are good in written, oral communication; if you like connecting with people, if you are a go-getter and are alert, quick thinker please take corporate communication/PR as your career. It has very bright future.

During the 2002 World Cup, a doctored photo appeared on the cover of the British newspaper “The Mirror.” The photo depicted members of the Argentinean defense with women’s handbags in front of a goal. The photo instantly made the rounds on the Internet, ultimately becoming one of the most shared photos of all time. Though FIFA World Cup establishment did not meant to use this photograph as a direct marketing ploy of the FIFA World Cup, the shared photo helped to further heighten the already global prestige of the event!

The leading media networks today are Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Of course there are other sites that fall under the category of prominent social networks including YouTube, Pinterest and LinkedIn. The Internet has paved way for the Viral Marketing. All over the world the marketers prefer to go viral.  It is an amazing method of generating traffic and leads but also creates a great demand for a new or older product. It is successful because it creates the curiosity and desire needed to generate the demand for a product or service.

The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are treating the popular song Kolaveri Di from a Tamil film ‘3’ as a classic example of viral marketing. IIM – Ahmadabad dedicated a session to Kolaveri Di as part of its course on Contemporary Film Industry: A business perspective. Various professors at IIMs are saying that viral marketing is in-thing and marketers should not neglect it.

Online viral marketing is the latest marketing tool

Online viral marketing is the latest marketing tool that is creating buzz in today’s net savvy world. It is thriving on the word-of-the-mouth phenomenon for numerous products in the world. The Australian beer company, Carlton Draught, wanted to produce an ad that would grab the attention of the world. The result: “The Big Ad.”  The ad went viral, forcing the beer company to scale back its broadcast television ambitions due to risk of over-exposure. Within 24 hours of its release, the ad attracted more than 162,000 views, and after two weeks it had garnered over one million views. Viral advertising may take the form of video clips, interactive flash games, e-books, images, or even text messages.

In 2007, World Wrestling Entertainment promoted the return of Chris Jericho with a viral marketing campaign using 15 second videos. The videos contained hidden messages and biblical links related to Jericho.

The key to successful Viral Marketing is to tweak the marketing message online astutely. When one consumer finds some value in your message he is likely to forward it on to his network of contacts. Online consumers tend to forward these messages for a variety of reasons, but all of them stem back when they believe that message in an ad has an intrinsic value that they wish to share with others.

In an effort to build up their online presence, Kraft launched a branded micro site called “Cheesy Movies.”  The site, which corresponded with Kraft’s much larger back-to-school promotions, allowed participants to create an account and develop their own animated movies up to 25 seconds long.  The short films featured an array of different props and characters for participants to work with and manipulate.  The micro site was a hit with both kids and parents.  Thousands of movies were created with each participant spending on average between 30 minutes and an hour on the site.

Viral message can often be word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online; it can harness the network effect of the Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly. Viral marketing is linked to social intelligence. According to the original definition of Edward Thorndike, social intelligence is “the ability to understand and manage men and women, boys and girls, to act wisely in human relations”. It is equivalent to interpersonal intelligence. Many thinkers have opined that social networking improves social intelligence.

Nike has become a master of viral marketing over the years, but this 2006 ad staring Brazilian soccer superstar Ronaldinho has emerged as one of the greatest viral ads of all time. The “is it real, or is it doctored” quality of the ad caused many viewers to send the clip to friends to get a second opinion on whether the feat was real or computer generated. As of today, the amateur-looking clip has generated more than 30 million views on YouTube and positioned itself as one of the most successful and acclaimed viral ads of all time.

In another case, BMW launched a series of eight high-cost, high-production short films released on BMW’s website. The films were produced and directed by such acclaimed filmmakers as David Fincher and Guy Richie and starred actors such as Don Cheadle, Clive Owen, and even Madonna. Within the first four months of release, the films attracted over 11 million views and sent BMW sales up 12% in 2001 alone. The success of the BMW series has prompted many other car manufacturers such as Nissan, Chevrolet to adopt a similar internet-based strategy.

People want to stay connected with their friends, families and the world from wherever they are. We usually tend to pass on any news, message which strikes us or our imagination with our near and dear ones.  The word viral means an infection caused by virus; here viral means infectious, crazy, frenzy.

Smirnoff wanted to promote the launch of Raw Tea, a new line of alcoholic malt beverages. To do this, they released a music video called “Tea Party” to the product’s micro site. The video eventually made it over to YouTube where it has attracted nearly 5 million views. The popularity of the video inspired the marketers at Smirnoff to expand Raw Tea’s website to include follow-up videos and online contests in order to make the site more interactive.

As the name “viral” suggests infection, this marketing technique can spread uncontrolled after effects like a virus. It has both positive and negative side effects. The effects of viral marketing can only be controlled to a certain extent and are dependent on one’s creativity. I personally feel marketers need to be very careful while deciding the target audience and the timing for viral marketing.

When Chevrolet created a user generated advertising platform for a campaign for their new model ‘Tahoe’, things went wrong when users started making critical comments of the big car maker’s fuel efficiency and environmental friendliness. The rumors on commercials typically included stuff like this: Hey, 2,325 U.S. kids have died, 16,653 have been injured, and up to $2 trillion will be spent to keep our oil supply safe. If you support the troops you’ll get out there and use some of it! Chevy Tahoe: Don’t let all that blood go to waste.

Sony, decided to put the marketing of their PSP system in the hands of some eccentric ad agency, and striding into the unsafe waters of viral marketing, the ad agency Zipatoni made a terrible, appalling video of some guy rapping about how he wanted a PSP for Christmas and posted it on Youtube along with links to a website. Never once was it mentioned that Sony was behind this ad, in fact the ad was presented as fan made. The campaign was torn apart nastily and exposed over at somethingawful.com. The feelings of Sony’s customers and its target audience got hurt with this nasty ad. Sony could only respond in an apologetic manner and a tall explanation. The rivals of Sony derived a great mileage out of the ad failure.

Like every coin has two sides, Viral Marketing too has its two sides; heads and tails, you decide which side you want to use.

Why do consumers ignore marketing messages? They are too tired of advertisements day in and out moreover everywhere they go. Because of this boredom they don’t know the brand and what the offering is, they don’t understand how the product or service works, they don’t understand the benefits of the brands, they find the advertised messages ambiguous, they feel the ads are not directed at them, the messages are dull and tiresome, while commercials are aired consumers are busy doing something else, they’re at work, they are not in a mood to hear the ads, in short the customers are tired of hearing from the brands and fundamentally to the company’s value  offering. The moral of this narrative is the good brands don’t need to be advertised too often and good brands sustain on their core values.

It is a fact that brands like Apple, Nike, McDonald or Google achieved their iconic statuses because of an unattainable magical formula, or we can say that they are lucky to have the brilliance of a single visionary leader. However, these companies have adopted specific approaches and principles that transformed their ordinary brands into iconic brands.  

Great brands don’t waste too much time and money on image building; Instead great brands focus on culture, core operations, and customer experience. They reach out to their customers when it is required. Intelligent marketers concentrate on internal marketing communication than external marketing communication. They turn to advertising, promotions, and public relations only after all other elements of the brand have been developed and aligned. These companies believe that actions (customer’s experience) speak louder than words. When organizations cultivate stronger corporate culture, have healthy relations with their stakeholders, believe in corporate governance their brands fuel faster growth.

There’s a lot in name for brands

In my opinion the brand name matters in its success and its life cycle.  Where did the name Apple Computer come from? Steve Jobs & Wozniak wanted their startup to be ahead of Atari Computers in the phone book. They wanted to stay away from the unfriendly, larger than life, complex images created by other computer companies such as IBM, Digital Equipments, Cincom etc. Jobs and Wozniak wanted to pay a tribute to Apple Records, the music label of the Beatles. There’s another tale to it that Jobs in his early life had worked in a farm at California picking and growing apples. The name just clicked and rest is history.

Good brands don’t become complacent

One of the fundamental principles of a brand’s success is its ability to do two challenging things at the same time – maintain consistency in the core of the brand such as quality, features, and price points along with this constantly change in order to stay in tune with the changing times. Doing these two things simultaneously is a big challenge for any brand.  Sony – one of the most distinguished global consumer electronics brand which has enjoyed unparallel brand equity and loyalty is surprisingly losing out its position. Its rivals Samsung and LG are giving it a tough time. Over the last couple of years, Sony has been gradually but surely slipping from its ivory tower.

There are few reasons for Sony’s fall from the top. This is because of its excessive and unrelated diversifications; to name a few – consumer electronics, music label, online music store, semiconductors, a motion picture company and financial units. These diversifications suck its energy and added to heaped costs of unrelated operations.  The diversification’s have not only drained the brand’s resources to a great extent but also abstracted the brand focus from the core of the brand. In addition, brand Sony has become complacent; it has many loopholes left open in its operations making it vulnerable to attacks from rivals. The followers (holding follower position) in the market who are agile, more energized attacked on the loose ends on multiple fronts. Samsung, LG, Apple, Nokia and others have grabbed Sony’s market share in consumer electronics segment.

Good brands don’t chase customers

Regularity and reliability cannot be compromised in the brand building game. The philosophy adopted by Ray Kroc – the founder of McDonald’s is that they can’t be successful unless their operators (franchisees) are successful. The logic is so profound. Approximately 85% of McDonald’s restaurants are owned and operated by independent business men and women. The idea of McDonald’s has always been of wanting to build a restaurant system that would be known for food of consistently high quality and uniform methods of preparations. Their aim, of course, was to assure repeat business based on the system’s reputation rather than on the quality of a single store or operator. This required a continuing program of educating and assisting operators and a constant review of their performance. The key to uniformity is their ability to provide techniques of preparation that operators have to follow. The success also comes because of its management listening so carefully to its operator’s problems, thoughts, ideas and solutions. The success of this partnership between the company and its operators is that the operators devote full time and best efforts to their restaurant business. Their focus and passion is what makes McDonald’s the number one food service organization in the world.

Great brands when commit stay committed

Another iconic brand Nivea body cream has been around for many years. Nivea is used in a household for generations together making it a habit. You will see Nivea on the dressing shelf constantly in many households; this is because it is super hydrating and makes the skin supple. This body cream product has maintained its fragrance, feel, thickness, packaging design same for years. When you buy the bright blue round tub/tin you know what you’re getting. It is one of those creams that have not changed, thus enjoying a large amount brand loyalty.

The best brands are good inside

Fortune Magazine and the Great Place to Work Institute named Google the 2014’s “Best Company Work For.” It’s the fifth time Google has enjoyed this position. This company has always believed in bringing diverse in demographics, smart, talented young people together. They believe in providing a very conducive atmosphere to people while allowing them to innovate, good benefits and perks, safety to women employees. Well, the company has a systematic hiring policy. Nepotism is completely avoided.  It is one of the employee friendly organizations. When the work atmosphere is great, obviously the employees give their best. 

Good brands stretch out

GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare is leveraging on Horlicks’s brand equity to get into new categories. Horlicks is an old player in the market. Horlicks came to India with The British Army; the end of World War 1 saw Indian soldiers of British Indian Army bringing it back with them as a dietary supplement. It has been around for decades. But there are no evident signs of its ageing. Horlicks’ market share is above 50 per cent as per AC Nielsen market survey.  It would be foolish for GlaxoSmithKline not to leverage the equity of such a brand. Thus, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare decided to use the brand’s equity to get into new categories. It has launched biscuits for children, a nutrition drink for women, an energy bar and chilled milk. Thus good brands stretch out.

Pay attention on how you make a relevant brand!