Brand Matters: Branding Rules Inspired by My Japanese Vacation
Robert C. Sprung can be reached at robert@tippingsprung.com. TippingSprung (New York City) offers brand strategy, naming, and design services with a focus on the needs of technology companies.
Studying the Japanese market firsthand—and talking with consumers—yields some interesting insights.
By Robert C. Sprung,TippingSprung LLC
Given the opportunity to write about their vacation in Japan, many people would focus on the temples of Kyoto or the fish market of Tokyo. My unusual trip included a visit with a healthcare products company, many trips down the aisles of the local pharmacy, and numerous conversations with typical Japanese consumers about which brand names work well in Japan and which ones don’t. I’ve distilled the essence into a few reasonably simple rules.
• Take the time to understand the basics of how the Japanese language works. The rule applies not only to Japanese, but also more generally to any of your large target markets. Given many of the brand names currently developed, American marketers often are unaware of even basic rules of how words are put together abroad. Japanese words, almost without exception, consist of relatively short strings following the pattern, consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel. You can cite as examples just about any Japanese brand names you already know: Sony, Yamaha, Honda, Shiseido. Names that deviate markedly from this structure have the danger of becoming tongue twisters. Best to avoid strings of consonants, silent letters, and names with multiple l’s and r’s. Easier said than done—these issues are rife in U.S.-generated names.
• If you’re using English, keep it super-simple. Depending on your market, you can generally assume that consumers abroad have some familiarity with English. But you assume too much if you believe that knowledge includes any level of wordplay or subtlety. Names that sound clever here generally lose much if not all of their impact abroad.
You can also never take for granted what an English word means abroad. In Japan, the word “foam,” because of its early introduction in certain product names, is broadly associated with a face wash; using it to signify a different product type, such as shampoo or mouth rinse, might raise more than a few eyebrows.
Finally, keep in mind that many product names, even those based on English words, will end up in Japanese characters. Words that play on the look of English letterforms may lose much of their visual punch.
• Adopt a naming and testing process that generates a higher percentage of usable names. Of course, the holy grail of naming—a universally usable name—is perhaps unattainable. However, it is possible to come up with a process that minimizes names with poor or mediocre usability internationally.