News

Industries

Companies

Jobs

Events

People

Video

Audio

Galleries

My Biz

Ads & Rates

Submit content

My Account

Branding Opinion South Africa

Bad names = bad profits

The world is being digitised, compressed and re-compressed and forced to spin out of control while passing through the eye of the needle. The landscape has great opportunities for new ideas.

The game is in the hands of people with new level of literacy of new age thinking, new styles of business modelling, understanding of image supremacy and global cyber management. This dynamic new age is showing us the way in a drastic way. Best discover your path fast. New ideas need new names but only those that are capable to work globally. Here are some quick tests.

Whenever management discreetly accepts that their business name identity is 'not that good after all,' what they are saying is they have acknowledged the limitations of their name identity. However, at times they continue to face all kinds of daily shortcomings interfering in the business's performance. This dilemma is most common among large and small organisations, where the realisations of name identity dysfunctionalities become absorbed in day to day politics or figure pointing but grabbing the bull by the horns.

The ratio...

Mathematically, it can be easily proven that if a name is not performing at an optimal potential, its proportional dysfunctionalities are directly related to poor sales and lower profits. Today, a name identity of any organisation is the single most important issue of business communications and there are already large number of articles and research on this topic freely available on the Internet.

How can management rationalise the problem and lead a charge to increased profitability?

The fastest way to determine the power of a name is applying the 5 Star Standard of Naming.

This evaluation is based on identifying five distinct features of a name and awarding each with a star.

First Star: Is your name easy and simple?
Second Star: Is your name one-of-a-kind?
Third Star: Is your name highly related to your business activity?
Fourth Star: Is your name nationally/globally protectable?
Fifth Star: Is your name with a matching and identical dotcom?

Star rankings:

Now based on the number of stars earned you can easily evaluate the power of your name identity.

Five Stars:

If you have already won five stars, the name identity holds a winning combination, and is fully capable of travelling around the world without hassle, and consequently has a bright future. Such Five Star name identities cost very little in promotion as they attract customers based on their shine and personality, therefore promoting themselves with unparalleled personality and dynamic appeal. All super successful brands around the globe have attained Five Star Status.

Four Stars:

The identity is somewhat solid, yet still lacking in some critical area. A deficiency of any of the five key components makes the name very difficult to push. Costs will always increase and sales may be low.

Three Stars:

The name identity is injured; excessive adverting is constantly needed to keep the name alive, marketing messages keep changing and overly-exaggerated graphic support is required to cover up the missing components. The name appears bandaged in an attempt to keep it upright.

Two Stars:

name-identity is seriously damaged; all the efforts are uphill battle. Sales are difficult, recognition is never achieved, and limitations are constantly hurting the name identity.

One Star:

The name-identity has been exhausted and is simply dying; no amount of re-branding or advertising will protect it or make it a big brand. Customers have little respect for the name brand, while the markets and competition become increasingly aware, rendering your name brand in a vulnerable position. It will either fade away as a forgotten identity or be overtaken by more dynamic identities.

Reality Check

The most difficult challenge is to get the attention of the management and get consensus to face the facts. Organisations often use the excuse that they are too busy to make this a priority. They ignore that sometimes it's the poor name performance directly responsible for the chaos in the first place. The Five Star Standard provides logical solutions and diffuses the emotionally charged internal naming tensions, it's an acid test; denials only prolongs the agony. How to organise and manage corporate and business naming issues, best download the free Naming Guide at www.abcnamebank.com.

About Naseem Javed

Naseem Javed is a corporate philosopher, chairman of Expothon Worldwide; a Canadian Think tank focused on National Mobilization of Entrepreneurialism on Platform Economies.
Let's do Biz