What's in a name?

“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare asks through Juliet. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” she concludes.

Juliet, alas, did not pass her marketing class ere her tragic demise. Had she but some ambition academic and forsook love for lira, she would know that if the name stinks, no one is bothering to sniff the rose.

This is not an earth-shattering revelation, yet bad business names persist and continue to stink up business.

I believe most business names fall along a graph in a pattern, where the ability of the name to tell a story and the quality move up and to the right. And as we move northeast the total numbers shrink. This chart is made up and only takes into account names at inception, absent the brand it might become. Some businesses can succeed in spite of bad names, but I really believe this number is small.

When I note that the business name tells a story, I mean that it aligns with, and is additive to the brand’s overall narrative.

The most obvious in the far upper right quadrant is Nike. For a brand founded on athletic success and drive, a reference to the Greek Goddess of Victory (in athletics among other endeavors) both tells a story and is additive to the brand. Nike will forever feel like the gold standard but they are not alone.

Starbucks, while arguably a bit more esoteric, is another one. In an effort to call to mind the seafaring tradition of coffee traders, the founders looked to literature and the first mate in the story of Moby Dick, a coffee lover.

Google was telling us all up front of the volume of results they could provide in massive numbers.

For every one of those, however, there are legion that fall to the lower left of the quadrants.

While I make this sound like a binary science, I concede the practice of naming a business is far from it. It is subjective like so much of marketing.

As we move down and left in the quadrants, there is a sizeable share that are good (perhaps not great) that have stories (with varying degrees of relevance).

Caterpillar trucks and equipment were named because of how they appeared to move like… you guessed it… a caterpillar. Is that a good thing? Maybe. Caterpillars turn into other things so perhaps that they are used in constructing new things fits. And slow, plodding movements may be good when you want methodical over speed. I would suggest this fits in one of the two middle categories.

I would dare to put Apple in the middle but only because of the lore behind the name vs. anything more definitive. The stated reason was the Steve Jobs was a fruitarian and liked the fruit as it sounded approachable. But conflicting stories exist, including the one that no one could think of anything better by the deadline and so it became Apple. Meanings that have been assigned to it persist and that is due in part to a strong product and an adherence to brand standards. Let the consumer decide what it means. Being in this middle category clearly isn’t problematic for many, but subjectively, if you knew nothing else, would Apple make you think of tech?

If you name a business after yourself or someone in your life, you are telling a story. It is a story that may not mean anything to the consumer, at least on the surface, but there is one there. And there are millions of examples of this succeeding in part because the name itself is largely an empty vessel into which you can pour all of your marketing and branding resources in order to create the story.

Tiffany & Co. wasn’t always the lifestyle brand it is now, that took years and dedication to refinement of their brand. Tiffany started as a stationery and fine goods retailer. No one would have aspired to breakfast at Tiffany’s without years going into making the name the brand.

As I look into starting my own businesses, and continue to explore opportunities in the corporate world, I keep finding really bad business names.

There are very few businesses (if any, I haven’t combed the entire list) in the Fortune 500 with puns in the name. This is no assault on the pun, I love a good one, but not when it comes to a business. For some reason I’ve never understood, hair salons have long had punny names (and these are actual): Heads You Win, Head Shed, A Cut Above, Anita Haircut, A Breath of FresHair, Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow and Hairport.

It is unlikely to see a salon in the Fortune 500 though, and maybe that’s why they proliferate at the local level, but I think the principle remains the same regardless of your size and footprint.

I have come across recruiters with cutesy names, and I wonder if they thought about how candidates would feel being represented by cute over serious. Are candidates confident that cutesy gets jobs?

Would you consider doing business with Cool Guy Lending? Even if the head of the company was named Guy Winter? In this case, the story is a play on names but the category for the business absolutely must be taken into account. When faced with multiple options, I couldn’t do business with this Guy (see, I love puns). For the record, I don’t believe this company exists, but there are others in the category with similar issues.

When consumers begin their journey to decide where to spend money, they often have only a name. While products may be be better for one, humans often cut their consideration sets based on perception over reality.

If you name your rose business “Manure-factored Roses” there is a good chance one would assume they will not smell as sweet. I think even Juliet would agree.