One major frustration for any fashion creative is naming their brand. Many aspiring designers have found themselves in a similar position, they’ve got an amazing concept, but no idea how it will resonate with consumers. It’s not just an arbitrary thing, it greatly impacts brand perception. Forbes cites it as a key requirement for starting a clothing line.
- Not Doing Any Research
If you’re just starting out and don’t know much about branding or marketing yet, this mistake is easy to make. You may be so focused on getting started and figuring out how to run your business that you don’t spend enough time thinking about how to name it. But a good name doesn’t happen by accident, it takes time and effort to develop something that works for both consumers and potential investors.
Your brand name is going to be on everything from your website and social media accounts to your packaging and advertising materials. It’s going to be the first thing potential customers see when they find out about you, so it’s essential that you make sure it’s right. Do your research.
- Complicated spelling and hard pronunciations
You might want to take inspiration from prestige and luxury brands and emulate their hard-to-pronounce names, but you have to keep in mind that most of those names are foreign, or aristocratic family names. If you’re going to launch a brand that’s going to be globally marketed and have a worldwide reach, you must choose a name that’s easy to pronounce and spell.
It’s better for your brand if people can remember it easily, and if they know how to pronounce it correctly in one try. You want them to be able to tell their friends about it and recommend it because they enjoy saying the name. In addition to being easy to pronounce, a good fashion brand name should be memorable.
- Ignoring the link between brand personality and position
The name has to fit the brand and its marketing goals, your goal is for the name to be
- Memorable
- Catchy
- Evocative of what your company stands for.
It has to be in line with your overall strategy and have all the right connotations in order for it to work well in all media channels (e.g., print ads, social media posts). And of course, it has to be legally compliant.
You probably already know this, but when you’re in “creative mode,” it can be easy to forget just how important these details are when choosing a name for your brand.
- Trademark is crucial
A trademark protects your name from being used by other companies so that you can be sure that consumers will associate your product with you and not someone else. It’s important to remember that a trademark won’t protect every word in your brand name, only those that are unique enough to be considered “distinctive.” A business name generator is always an excellent idea to make sure you’re picking the right names and avoiding all the red flags mentioned above!
Grant Polachek is the head of branding for Squadhelp.com, 3X Inc 5000 startup and disruptive naming agency. Squadhelp has reviewed more than 1 million names and curated a collection of the best available names on the web today. We are also the world’s leading crowdsource naming platform, supporting clients such as Nestle, Dell, Nuskin, and AutoNation.