Brand Matters: News in Naming
A survey reveals some of the recent likes and dislikes in beauty product naming.
By Robert C. SprungTippingSprung LLC
Choosing a name is one of the most important decisions a company can make when launching a new brand. TippingSprung fielded one of the first-ever surveys of brand names to acknowledge some of the great and not-so-great names recently launched.
Consulting with a panel of industry experts, we determined nine key categories (e.g., best celebrity fragrance name, or friendliest corporate renaming). For each category, the panel then nominated and voted on a list of finalists. None of the names included in the survey were developed by TippingSprung.
The survey was sent to 6864 branding and marketing professionals at major corporations. Of these, 393 professionals responded within the time limit.
Best celebrity fragrance name
We asked respondents to choose which celebrity fragrance name they liked best. The pie chart on this page shows the results.
Glow is a clear winner in the category. It’s a simple, real-word idea, one that describes exactly how you want to look and feel when you are wearing the fragrance. It also has a strong echo of Jennifer Lopez’s nickname, J.Lo.
Curious, Spirit, and Notes all received a similar number of votes. Of these names, we like Notes best because it suggests both musical notes and the subtle notes of a fragrance. Curious is a fun name that becomes saucier and more risqué when associated with Britney.
Spirit and My Manifesto are both strange choices for a name in our opinion. Spirit seems very generic and has little direct connection with Antonio Banderas. My Manifesto would be great for a Karl Marx perfume, but it seems to have little to do with Isabella Rossellini.
What would you call a fragrance for Madonna?
Respondents also wrote in suggestions for fragrance names for both Madonna and Maria Sharapova, both of whom have fragrances currently in development. Some of the names that TippingSprung found interesting were taken into a preliminary legal screening for identical trademarks by Daar Vanek, a firm of intellectual-property lawyers in Chicago.
Names submitted and screened for Maria Sharapova included Anticipation; Court; Game, Set, Match; Intensity; and Serve. Those for Madonna included Evolution, Karma, Reinvention, and Taunt. Of these names, Taunt appeared most likely to be available for Madonna. Game, Set, Match encountered the fewest trademark problems for Maria Sharapova.
It is not unusual for 90% of names to fail a preliminary legal screening, particularly if the candidates have not been developed by naming professionals. In this case, we submitted almost 20 fragrance names for screening and only two emerged as potentially available. If we took these into full legal searches as well as international trademark searches, there is a very strong likelihood that we would be left with no legally available names to choose from.
This exercise shows that it is relatively easy to come up with a clever, distinctive, and memorable name. The challenge, however, is to come up with a clever, distinctive, and memorable name that is also available to use and protect as a trademark. When naming professionals work on a project, they must typically screen almost 250 names in order to present the client with 25 names from which to choose.
Robert C. Sprung can be reached at robert@tippingsprung.com. TippingSprung (New York City) offers brand strategy, naming, and design services.