Selling the Invisible: a field Guide to Modern Marketing \(Biz Books to Go\) pdfdrive com

Give your service a name, not a monogram.
Don’t Make Me Laugh
It’s tempting to create a clever name.
Sometimes, this temptation becomes so strong that you give your service a
slightly funny name. Let’s say, Hair Apparent for a hair transplant clinic.
Here’s a test that will talk you out of this mistake. Look up one of those
wittily named services (chances are it’s a hair salon or a pizza place). Go there
and go in. You will notice two things:
You have never been there before.
And it’s almost empty.
Don’t get funny with your name.
To Stand Out, Stand Out
Kimberly-Clark spends millions of dollar a year keeping people from calling

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tissues kleenexes. Xerox does the same to keep the word “Xerox” from
becoming a synonym for “photocopy.”
Why the fuss? Because these companies do not want their name to become
generic. They want their name to stand for their product.
Just as sophisticated marketers do not want their brand names to become
generic, you do not want a generic name as your brand. A generic name is not
your name; it is everyone’s.
Three Twin Cities companies call themselves Financial Services Inc.,
Financial Specialists Inc., and Financial Counseling Inc. If someone from
Financial Specialists called you, isn’t there a great chance that months later you
might think that call came from Financial Services?
Do you want people not to know who you are? Not to remember you? Not to
be impressed by you immediately? Not to be able to tell your company from half
a dozen others?
Generic names encourage generic business.
Tell Me Something I Don’t Know
Among advertising people, it is assumed that companies named Creative
(Something) are not creative.
That’s partly because a name like Creative Design contradicts itself. The
name, after all, could not be less creative.
The same is true of Quality, as in Quality Cleaners. Doesn’t that sound like a
cleaner that might break your buttons?