Naming : Company and Product

Naming is the activity of giving a company, a product or a service a suitable name to be recognised in the market.

The name for a company is by no means a secondary factor, especially when it comes to verifying that in foreign languages or dialects of certain localities it may have a harmful meaning for the company’s activity. (Some fashion brands allow naming in more than 200 countries and in more than 50 languages to avoid nasty surprises).

In Italy, SMEs have a company name, but they rarely give a name to their products or services; a name for your product or service allows you to enhance it at the moment of sale. Moreover, products and services should always be named differently from the company name.

Is product naming important?

Naming a product or service allows you to differentiate yourself from the competition, because each product or service will certainly have direct or indirect competitors. Every company should actually give a name to each product or service it sells.

Every product has a sales cycle, from launch, to maturity and finally decline, so it is very dangerous to combine the name of the company with the name of the product or service, disconnecting the life of the company from that of the product or service at that moment.

As soon as the maturity phase of the product is over, it is possible to launch a new product under a different name while maintaining the positioning acquired with the previous product. It is therefore necessary to foresee a certain dynamism because it is normal for a product to come to an end sooner or later.

Naming is a strategic activity that requires a specific study.

It is not advisable to use acronyms and long names that are difficult to remember, and the brand must be registered in order to defend its ownership. It is better to rely on professionals for this type of activity, but above all, don’t make the mistake of not naming our products and linking the company to a product, we must always work to give greater continuity and to lengthen the life cycle.

Always analyse what the competition is doing, never underestimate topics such as naming, payoffs and the visual part of the product, which must always be aligned with the company’s strategy, especially from an export perspective.

How does your company manage the naming of its products or services?