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Rivkin & Associates Home The Naming Workshop Creating New Names
 
A quarterly report on the strategies & tactics of naming, produced by
Rivkin & Associates LLC, a marketing and communications consultancy
Naming a New Brand vs. an “Enhanced” Brand
Let’s say your brand has a significant and genuine improvement, and not just a cosmetic change. Most marketers agree that the new product deserves its own brand name and separ...
Bloggers Buzz to Name Those Doritos
X-13D? What kind of name is that for something you pop into your mouth? Doritos turned naming conventions upside down with its savvy plan a few months ago to generate buzz ...
Stodgy AT&T Silences “Cingular”
De-Branding. That’s one way to describe it when a well-established brand name goes “poof!” Knuckleheaded. That’s another way to describe a dubious marketing decision. Th...
It’s a Boy, it’s a Girl … It’s a Domain Name
Parents are beginning to lock up Internet domain names for their infants before the little ones even leave the hospital. These are cyber-savvy parents who worry that the na...
Humdrum Name, but First-Rate Communication
Once the name was IDS, Investors Diversified Services. Then it became American Express Financial Advisors. And in late 2005, it was spun off and changed again to (very small d...
Boeing Plays "Name That Plane" With The Public
We’ve reported before on the use of contests in naming. The maker of Crayola products, for instance, urged crayon enthusiasts to help rename an old color, and name suggestions...
 
Woolworths Caught Sleeping with “Lolita” Beds
“Unbelievably bad taste.” “An alarming level of stupidity.” “How much encouragement does the pedophile community need?” Those were just a few of the comments in the British...
Flowerbomb? What Were They Thinking?
Perfumers in Amsterdam debuted a new fragrance named Flowerbomb. Their intent was to evoke a “floral explosion” – a sweet profusion of flowers peppered with hints of or...
Super-Sizing a Name
The Hefty trademark for plastic trash bags goes back to 1968. This brand might have been called Mighty or Dense or Prodigious, or some other synonym for “large and stro...
BID, BUD, EAT, HOG – Stock Symbols with Flair
Who says corporations have no sense of humor? When it comes to stock symbols, most are chosen specifically to reflect the company name. Presumably, that logical approach m...
 
Name Recognition Tops Taste Perception
Brand names taste better. That’s the conclusion from a savvy study of peanut butter and consumer choice. The details were first reported years ago in The Journal of Con...
Creation of New Names Slows Slightly
The introduction of new names by U.S. companies has slowed slightly. According to our 2004 survey, 81% of companies introduced a new name for a product, service, company or...
Siren Songs in Licensing: Q&A with Jack Trout
One of the current siren songs of marketing is the opportunity to earn some extra money by licensing your brand name. Someone comes up to you and offers you a deal you can...
Testing names: Q&A with Sandra Bauman
Can you really test a new name with customers and prospects? What can you expect to learn from the process? To answer those questions, we sat down with Sandra Bauman, PhD., fo...
 
The Making of a Name
By Steve Rivkin & Fraser Sutherland
The secrets of successful brand names— who makes them; why they’re made; and how they’re compiled, bought, sold, and protected
Rivkin & Associates Home The Naming Workshop Creating New Names
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