Naming and the Emotional Connection
Your name needs to create an experience that customers remember and that forges an emotional connection. Naming is often thought of as descriptive and sometimes evocative of specific experiences, but the key to good naming is building an emotional connection to the brand. The name should forge a connection that sticks with the consumer, that they remember, that they ask for and in turn, becomes associated with the product experience and, if you're really lucky, with the product category as a whole (although this can bring up trademark protection issues — another story!).
The problem for many brands when developing names is they try to do too much with too little. Creating a memorable ask-for name requires you to make a connection with the customer. You can do that with a completely unusual name or a name that literally says what the product does. The question is how much time and money can you invest to reach the customers you want most?
Here are some simple recommendations for brand naming that work with small or big brands, and with large or small budgets. The key here is giving the customer an experience that has value and evokes positive emotions.
 Be personal
Creating a name that brings in what your customers want is essential. Unless you are an enormous brand or can spend a fortune on marketing to build a positive association, you need to adopt a name that gets right to your customers' experience and evokes your name as part of something positive. For example, we recently named an online herbal supplement company "MyHealthHerbals.com" because the name says to the consumer, "This is your herbal supplement store." The name invites participation.
 Be simple
Names that are hard to spell or hard to remember lose out immediately. You have to understand your market and how a brand name can capture only a fragment of the consumer's attention at any moment. How you lock in recognition, understanding and, if you're lucky, love and passion, comes from simplicity. Netflix, for example, is easy to remember and, more importantly, it says what it does — deliver movies online. This is a great name that is almost impossible to get wrong and has easily comprehended meaning.
 Say what you do
As with simplicity, keep it functional; link to the way the user understands things. The one thing I loved about the Flip Camera name (even though Cisco, who now owns the brand, is going to kill the product) is that it says what it does: It's a camera with a simple USB connection that you "flip" out. The iPhone is another example; it's a personal phone product from Apple.
 Don't reinvent the wheel
As you build your brand connection you can be different or radical, but connecting to customer experience means keeping the brand connected to what consumers value. When AT&T named its 100-year old Bell Labs division Lucent Technologies, they threw away a century of goodwill from a trusted technology experience. After renaming Bell Labs as Lucent, the company had such low brand recognition that AT&T spent $300 million in one year to build the connection between Bell Labs and Lucent, and even added the phrase "from Bell Labs" to its products.
 Promise a great experience
When you're connecting with your customers, you want the name to create and connect to what customers want and what they get out of your products and your company. Cuisinart is an excellent example of a name that connects customers to their story instantly — cuisine and art, i.e., what you want to make with the product. It makes you the hero.
So, follow these simple rules on approaching brand naming and you'll develop a bond, an emotional connection to the customer that they remember.
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