Product Branding
By Gary Ferrington

Naming a product can be a challenge. How do you create a product name that will attract customers? How do you protect your product or service name from use by others? What are the legal issues related to selecting a name?

Welcome to the topic of product branding.

If you are developing a product or a service for a client, or yourself, you may want to consult the following web resources to learn more about the brand naming process. Each link provides a variety of useful information that we have found of value in our own work at Proscenia.

Naming Your Products by Yuko Watanabe. This paper presents the process of naming products or services. It is written in an outline form which makes it easy to access specific information related to product branding.

Snark Hunting: Naming and Branding Products in Popular Culture is a site "...dedicated to tracking what's going on in the naming and branding world, digging deeper to figure out what names or naming trends mean for the culture as a whole, and starting a conversation about a subject and a process that many people still find mystifying." The site provides a daily synopsis of issues related to product branding. It also provides an archive of past material as well as feature topics. You can subscribe to a newsletter which brings you daily information on this topic.

Cintra is a name branding company that works with clients to help make sure that the products and services they market attract the target customers they want. This site's "naming" section has some very useful ideas about the need for the creation of effective brand names. It provides case studies and suggests ways it, as a company, works with customers in helping develop a marketable product name.

Another brand naming organization is Igor. Igor's web site has an informative discussion presented in the article, "The best product & company names require the least advertising." This feature looks at six factors one needs to consider in developing an effective product name including: competitive analysis, product positioning, name development, trademark, creative testing, and name and tag line. A well chosen product name is the advertisement itself. Think for example of Coke, Kleenex, Xerox, Nike, and other brand names which by mentioning the name becomes an advertisement.

KnowThis.com provides Product Management, Branding & Packaging in Marketing.This is a page of links that connect to a variety of informative online articles and resources.

SoftwareMarketSolutions.com's Product Naming Resources provides links to web sites that let you check out everything from acronyms and abbreviations to information about trademarks.