In other words, names like Amazon trump names like Kodak.
Two sources provide solid evidence that real-word brand names are more readily adopted and remembered than coined names. One source, an academic paper, features research about brand name memorability. The other source is a book that analyzed the types of new words adopted into English over a fifty-year period; it casts light on the types of names English speakers are predisposed to adopting.
The academic paper (a paid download), Recall and Recognition of Brand Names: A Comparison of Word and Nonword Name Types, demonstrates that real-word brand names are much more likely to be recalled than "nonword" brand names (68.8% recall vs. 38.1%). The authors, Dawn Lerman of Fordham University and Ellen Garbarino of Case Western Reserve University, also found that "irrelevant" names are recalled at about the same rate as "relevant" names, thus validating so-called arbitrary names like Apple and Grey Goose. You don't have to call your online bookstore Books.com if you want to be remembered. In fact, you shouldn't.
Nonword brand names are not all bad. If the brand name is a nonword, it will be more distinctive and therefore stand out more. The hypothetical camera brand names in the article, Monit and Parade, do differ in their distinctiveness. Monit stands out because you've never seen it.
But irrelevant real-word names are also more distinctive than relevant real-word names. A small email device named PocketLink would not stand out like one called BlackBerry.
The lesson here is you’re better off with a name that's an arbitrary real word rather than a coined name. Although both will be distinctive, the arbitrary name will be more memorable. Amazon: 2. Kodak: 1.
The other source,Fifty Years Among the New Words (A Dictionary of Neologisms) by John Algeo, catalogs the words introduced into English between 1941 and 1991. Algeo documented new words not brand names. I'll take it as a given that what Algeo observed with words also applies to brand names.1
To Algeo, a “new" word is one “not recorded in general dictionaries.” This includes single words (e.g. guesstimate), multiple words (e.g. sandwich generation) or idiomatic phrases (e.g. out of the loop).
Algeo cites six etymological processes behind new words:
- borrowing from different languages
- combining two existing words to create a compound
- shortening an existing word
- blending existing words both combined and shortened
- shifting the meaning of an existing word
- creating new words not based on existing words, like the "nonwords" cited above
As it turns out, the least productive process leading to the fewest new words in English is the creation of new words without a clear link to existing language (i.e., nonwords). Algeo observedthat very few words are created from nothing and then widely adopted. “To make something out of nothing does not seem to be a human talent,” wrote Algeo.
The reason so few invented words are created and adopted is because our brains follow a path of least resistance. When we need a new word, re-defining something known or combining words in a new way is easier than starting from scratch. When new words are shared, it's easier to recall a known word than to create and remember an entirely new lexical entry. It’s Occam’s Razor as applied to word adoption.
The implications for brand naming are clear: People remember brand names more readily ifbased on known words rather than made-up ones. But with this generalization come caveats:
- Not all real words are equally memorable. Another fascinating research paper, Recall and Recognition Effects of Brand Name Imagery, documents that "high imagery" words (ones easily pictured) are more memorable than "low imagery" names that are abstract. So an abstract and undifferentiated real-word name like General Software will be far less memorable than a vivid real-word name like Firefly. Moreover, a coined name can be made unforgettable if it’s euphonious and paired with a good jingle or a mnemonic mascot.
- Moneytalks. With enough promotion, any name whether real or coined will be remembered. A spectacular example, and one in which I participated, is the $175 million that transformed the unknown word Accenture into the best-known name in business consulting.
- Longevity has its rewards. With decades of interaction with customers, brand names like Kodak and Oreo instill a great deal of meaning and associations, even if they began as meaningless words.
- Algeo’s observations were based on English speakers so it’s possible the results would differ if he researched new words in other languages. A former Landor colleague told me the French are quite fond of coining words. As Steve Martin observed, "They have a different word for everything."
Thanks to Matthew Cross for his help.
1. There is evidence (PDF will download) that brand names, like proper nouns, are processed differently than other words, but those differences don't apply here.
