Drop a name — make a million

Press, 29 June 1983, Page 13

Drop a name — make a million

By

RUPERT BUTLER

Features international

Who dreams up the names of the products we buy, from cars to canned beer? The answer, often, is the ordinary consumers who are going to use the products — and never have their ideas been more welcome. The plain fact is that the world is running out of names for new products — Britain alone now has over 300,000 registered trade marks — and finding names that are eyecatching, and available, is becoming a major problem. For instance, when a leading confectionery manufacturer was recently looking for a name for a new product, a short list of 350 was found to contain only two which had not been registered in other markets. No wonder naming names has become big business for such celebrated name-droppers, as John Murphy, responsible for some of today’s best-selling brand names. He is a breezy former marketing type who operates the London end of a $2 million business called Novamark. He is highly successful. It was his company who named the Maestro car, decided that a non-al-coholic beer should be called Barbican, and a disposable razor named Slalom. “Companies are notoriously unable to think up nqmes for the things they make. directors tear, their hair for weeks and then come begging to me, he says.

What does he do? One of the things is to ask the man and woman in the streets, the people who well may buj' the product. “I choose the High Street spenders best suited to the job — a cross-section of people likely to use the product, from secretaries to sales representatives. “I give them a briefing on the history of the product, feed them with lots of food and wine and expenses, and tell them to get on with it.” He calls his helpers “brainstormers” and their suggestions are fed into a computer to be studied by researchers, lawyers, and the client. The computer comes up with likely amalgams of all the names. Naming names may sound simple, but is fraught with problems, particularly if the product is to be sold internationally. John Murphy explains: “It is no good calling something ‘mist’, for example, if you want to sell it in Germany. In German, the word means ‘manure’ which is useless unless the product happens to be agricultural. “You would think if you waited to call a spare parts operation in the motor industry “Carfax” there

would be nothing to stop you. But when Chrysler United Kingdom wanted to do just that, the 8.8. C. secured an injunction because it had applied to make use of the same name.” Brainstormers on John Murphy’s books include language teachers, airline executives, embassy officials, and at least one member of the House of Lords. He has also called on a TV actor, a French cook, and an unemployed Mexican when he was looking for a name of a citrus fruit. He has also used volunteer crossword buffs to help with names. They produced thousands of words associated with the product with the help of reference books. “It’s not just a question of one individual producing a name and the client shouting ‘Eureka!’ We’re far more scientific than that,” he says. For instance, a computer is cunningly programmed to come up with pronounceable word combinations. Fed with a string of animal names, including zebra, lemming, a blackbird, it will come up, for example, with possibles likfe zeboa, lemmina, and zebird. “This is raw material for the client to consider and the creative

and the legal boys to get to work on,” John Murphy says. A name may sound wonderful, but will it cause problems? Take alcohol-free lager. Is it to be sold as a soft drink or a beer? Should the name sound English, neutral, or German? As the Middle East is a big potential market and is very sensitive at the merest suggestion of alcohol a carefully chosen, universally acceptable brand name is vital. Choosing a name can cost very big money indeed, especially if another company already has rights to it. Companies are often prepared to relinquish those rights — at a price. “I know of one American company which paid around $500,000 for a name it needed in a hurry,” Murphy says. Sometimes, the “name-droppers” break all the rules. John Murphy remembers: “We once gave a team the task of naming a soft drink. All pre-research suggested that the product would sell with a “cold” type of name. “Our team weren’t in the least impressed by the professional marketing men. They insisted that the sight of the can made them feel hot and parched. It had to have a hot name. “Their suggestion was adopted *and Cariba is one of the current soft drink success stories.”