Name Awards

All hotels under one name… to create a brand

Today’s name award goes to Ian Schrager, as recently profiled in a Business Week Hard Choices column.  Ian, one of the largest owners of a collection of unique boutique hotels around the country, is quoted as saying:

“The properties have value, but a brand itself has a value too. In retrospect, it was ridiculous. I should have developed all of my hotels under one name. I’m in the hotel business, not the cool business”

Yes, branding is sometimes a big money game. And now Ian is joining forces with Marriott rather than starting a new brand from scratch.

When the name and logo are at odds

Sometimes when we do name audits for clients we find there is nothing wrong with the name, but there may be a problem with the logo and other visual identity. Here are two from my old neighborhood that were always driving me nuts, even though colorful and bold and still successful.

Air National Guard’s Rescue Wing -  look more like feet to me!

And at the height of summer St. Stephens Green might be partially hidden in the greenery, but why did they have to paint in blue? It dropped 2 points on my elegance scale immediately. Of course, after you have had a pint or two and tried their great menu, you probably won’t care.

Stion is a great new name for a promising company

After all my recent public criticisms of the sound-alike solar company names popping up everywhere, it is very refreshing to come across Stion so I can praise a great name.

I still don’t know what Stion means, but nevertheless everyone will intuitively know it is a good phonetic name and have great recall of it. So that will then give them a natural hook back to what they do – especially large, unique and efficient solar panels if I read it right.

And with a recent $70million in new investment capital, they must be doing something impressive – apart from growing into their eloquent, sharp, short name. They deserve a big name award.

Water in a box! And just call it H20. Brilliant.

Never mind all the great sessions and private discussions, I took personal delight at the recent Sustainable Brands conference in discovering the free samples of H2O – water in a cardboard container.

How come I never thought of that? We have all made enough comments about wine in a box, so why not water in a box? It is a much improved packaging source to keep all those millions of plastic bottles out of landfills and the ocean.

As to whom has the registered trademark on H2O (without modifier), I am not sure, but it seems like it is now adjudged generic. In other words, anyone can use it and no one can own it.

Green names for great brands? Or green grammar?

At the Sustainable Brands conference this week in Monterey, I will be co-presenting on naming and grammar to describe sustainable brands. I know not everyone gets a choice, but I keep coming back to how the name and the product make for a more complete brand promise and experience.

So a uniquely new styled car like the Nissan Leaf, and before that the Prius and Tesla, make for so much more of a powerful market brand statement than something like Civic Hybrid or Lexus Hybrid – which don’t look different and don’t have unique names for a unique share of mind.

Despite the braking woes at Toyota, Prius has over 60% of the hybrid market, and Leaf is already sold out for this year.. before they even ship the first US model! Believe me, the writers over at Huffington Post are very misguided when they voted these names as being in the top 10 worst green names. Has anyone at Huffington ever been out of the city? They need some fresh air.

Intel back to numbers – but model years?

Ever since the Pentium came out it has been no big industry secret that many engineers at Intel harked for the days of the 486 and similar number nomenclatures. Well finally Intel is back to numbers.. but what an extreme tactic!

They are promoting their 2010 Core Processors widely right now. Maybe, just maybe, they will get some significant market share to notice before all the big auto companies start promoting their 2011 models starting Labor Day (first weekend in Sept).

Then who will want a 2010? Maybe get one on a dealer incentive fire sale day just like the older car models?  Will we have a Blue Book for chip values? And since no one owns a date, we are looking forward to the AM 2010 (or better still, with perfect vision, the AM 2020 or similar name from competitors).

PS Yes, it comes in 3 flavors. But would you buy a product with only a 3 Star Rating? (See graphics). Maybe that is their trick to push you to the i5 model. Grrrrr.