From Seed to Success: The Art of Naming a Product

Naming a product is an art and a science, requiring a balance of creativity and strategic thinking. Whether you’re naming a new variety of grape tomatoes or a cutting-edge tech gadget, understanding your market, competition, and brand strategy are key to success. This article explores these themes, using real-world examples and insights to illuminate the process of finding the perfect name for your product.

Key Takeaways for Crafting a Winning Naming Strategy: 

• Understand the Market Landscape: Before settling on a name, thoroughly assess the competitive environment. Knowing what names and strategies competitors use can help you identify gaps and opportunities, allowing your product to stand out.

• Balance Creativity with Strategy: Finding the right name requires both creativity and strategic thinking. Consider how a name can evoke emotions, tell a story, or differentiate your product from others in the market.

• Test with Your Target Audience: Testing potential names with your target consumers is crucial. Understand their perceptions and reactions to ensure the name aligns with their expectations and resonates with them emotionally.

• Choose Between Niche and Master Branding: Decide whether a niche or master brand strategy is best for your product. While a master brand can consolidate efforts across a range of products, niche branding can offer precise messaging and stronger emotional connections.

By following these key takeaways, you can craft a naming strategy that not only captures the essence of your product but also resonates with your audience, paving the way for successful brand recognition and loyalty.

Understanding the Market Landscape

Looking Beyond the Name

It’s easy to get caught up in the quest for the perfect name, focusing intensely on creativity and uniqueness. However, it’s equally important to understand the market landscape and the existing competition. As the process unfolds, a critical question emerges: What if the perfect name you’ve conceived is already in use or too similar to another product? This is why assessing the competitive environment is essential.

A Case Study: Desert Glory and Cherubs

Consider the story of Desert Glory and their journey in naming their grape tomatoes. At a time when tomatoes were just tomatoes, without any branded identity, Desert Glory sought to create something unique. Branding grape tomatoes posed a significant challenge due to the lack of precedent. However, this challenge also presented an opportunity: the chance to fill a gap in the market with a distinctive product name that stood out.

The Creative Process: Finding the Right Fit

Cherubs: A Sweet Success

When NameStormers suggested the name “Cherubs” for Desert Glory’s grape tomatoes, it struck a chord. The name evoked imagery of small, sweet angels, hinting at the tomatoes’ size and sweetness. The play on words with “cherry” resonated with consumers, who perceived Cherubs as a new type of cherry tomato, despite being something different.

Cherubs demonstrated how a well-chosen name could transcend its literal meaning, appealing to consumer emotions and perceptions. This approach not only differentiated the product but also expanded the category by inviting trial purchases through appealing branding and packaging.

Assessing Opportunities in Competitive Landscapes

Identifying opportunities within a competitive market is crucial. In the case of Desert Glory, naming the tomatoes “Cherubs” highlighted a gap in the market, allowing them to carve out a niche. By understanding the competitive landscape and consumer perceptions, companies can position their products effectively.

The Master Brand Strategy: When Does It Work?

The Power of a Unified Brand

A master brand strategy involves using a single brand name across multiple products. This approach can consolidate brand equity and streamline marketing efforts. For example, a company might use the name “Green Garden” for a range of produce items, such as green beans, tomatoes, and potatoes, to convey a sense of freshness and natural quality.

Limitations of a Master Brand

However, this strategy has its limitations. When niche brands like Cherubs emerge, they can challenge the master brand’s dominance by offering more specialized, targeted messaging. A generic name like “Green Garden” might lack the specificity and emotional resonance needed to capture consumers’ attention in a crowded market.

Niche vs. Master Brand

The success of Cherubs underscores the potential of niche branding to create a strong emotional connection with consumers. While a master brand can be effective in some scenarios, niche brands can deliver more precise messaging and foster deeper consumer engagement.

The Importance of Consumer Perception

Testing and Understanding Consumer Response

Testing potential names with target audiences is a crucial step in the naming process. Desert Glory’s success with Cherubs highlights the importance of understanding how consumers perceive and interact with a product name. It’s essential to explore why a name resonates or doesn’t with the target audience, ensuring that it aligns with consumer expectations and preferences.

Lessons Learned

The assumption that consumers understood the cherubic reference in the name “Cherubs” proved to be less significant than initially thought. Instead, consumers associated the name with a new type of cherry tomato, leading to trial purchases based on curiosity and novelty. This unexpected insight underscores the importance of market research and consumer testing in refining a product’s branding strategy.

Transcription:

Ashley Elliott (00:12):

Well, hello and welcome to naming in an AI Age. This week we’re going to talk about coming up with a great name for me. I think sometimes we become so focused on the name and what we need to name and even learning the target and all of that, that we forget to look at what’s going on around us and who is around us, and what if we come up with this brilliant name, but somebody else has it pointless at that point or it’s so close to someone. So I would say really assessing the competition, if any in your space. I think about Desert Glory when they came to name Stormers and they wanted a name for their grape tomatoes. It’s kind of like tomato, tomato. You go to the grocery store, there’s tomatoes everywhere. I remember going to the grocery store and I don’t remember them ever being in packages.

(00:57):

Maybe I was from a small town, Oklahoma, and they were probably grown in the garden outside. But thinking of branding and naming an actual grape tomato was a challenge at the time because they weren’t tomatoes that were branded and named like that. And so also just realizing that there’s in that competitive set and looking at that, there is some gaps that you can feel and opportunity you can take. And so that’s what they did. Naming these little small red grape tomatoes that looks kind of like cherry tomatoes that were sweeter than cherry tomatoes that were just these cute little round things. I mean, I don’t ever think of tomatoes and think of a big juicy tomato. I know that my grandpa did, and he would put salt on it and just eat it like an apple, which maybe that’s a thing I don’t know. But I like the little poppable ones that are on the salads or that you can take in a snack with you.

(01:50):

And so I love that y’all went through the process of trying to figure out what kind of name could really be branded in this space that can lean into the tomato, but not really feel like it’s just a descriptor of the tomato. And so when name storms came up with cherubs, I thought that was great. I mean, it’s small cherubs sounds like cherry, which could take you to the red element of it or the tomato element of it. It’s also like an actual play on cherub in the name of these little tiny little angels that are chunky and cute, unlike some of the angels that we know of. But these little cupid type angels that it just evokes this emotion. That was really great. I thought it was a really great branding strategy to really brand tomatoes in a way that hadn’t been done before. So I think also knowing what opportunities you have by looking at your competitive set. It’s not just the store brand and it’s cute packaging too that made you want to get that trial purchase and really expand the category there.

Mike Carr (02:56):

I think those are great points. I mean, I think you can never, the space that you’re in, what your competitors are doing. We’ll often have clients come to us and they want to use the master brand strategy. And what that strategy is, is we want to use the same name across our entire portfolio of products because it’s easier. You can put all your brand building dollars behind Green Garden, let’s say in that produce space. So you’ve got green garden, green beans, you’ve got green garden tomatoes, and you’ve got green garden potatoes. And it all speaks to this fresh thing. And that probably works fine if you don’t have branded competitors that are very niche, niche oriented. But then when you have a cherubs that comes along and cherubs does speak to that small size and something that’s cute and maybe sweeter angels sort of sweet and sweet little angels, it sort of kills that master brand.

(03:56):

Because first of all, green garden, a green tomato isn’t really what you’re buying. You’re buying a Red Tomato. So a name like that sometimes can be too limiting and you can’t rifle shot the message around each product that a master brand’s on, like you can with very niche brands like a cherubs for a tomato and something else for a potato that might be more in vogue with whatever makes for a great tasting potato. And then the last thing I would comment on is we thought cherubs was going to be a great name because people we thought would know what a cherub angel was, a cherubim. You mentioned the reason it actually succeeded, which was not that people knew that it was this little rosy cheeked sweet little angel. Most people didn’t, what most people thought was it was a new kind of cherry tomato because it began with CHER just like cherry, which is like, oh my gosh.

(04:54):

So consumers were buying it because it was a new kind of cherry tomato. Granted, it was more expensive, but it’s a garnish. It’s in salads, it’s not a big expense item. Let’s give it a try. And then when they tried it, it was so much sweeter. It actually had a higher brick score, a higher sweet index than the cherry tomato, which was the only other tomato that was small that was out there at the time. They loved it. And so that’s when they were really interested in paying more money. So not just, I think paying attention to the competitive set, but also testing the name and really understanding why exactly is it going to work or is it not going to work with your target might be a good idea too.

Ashley Elliott (05:37):

Yeah, I think that’s a great point. I think knowing your target, knowing your competitive set, even thinking about brand strategy, do we want our rifle shot that name, or do we want one that can be across multiple different services or platforms is a great start. There are plenty of other things that we could talk about too. So stay tuned for next week when we dive into another naming topic.

Mike Carr (05:59):

Thank you so much everyone. Have a great week.