Name Awards

Travelocity is a great name with an even better character

Travelocity is a great example of three in one naming, as I call it. The name has 3 clearly obvious roots, all of which pertain to the core message and business:  Travel, Velocity and City. More than that, it is very much a coined name, but the English roots are so obvious it will not immediately scare off all those stuck-in-the-muds who don’t like coined names for anything. As a result, Travelocity also has the power of an easily protectable trademark worldwide.

While their three star logo is a little bland, it too is a registered trademark. And it sure is hard to come up with any unique icon nowadays for a travel firm.

But their little roaming gnome character is sheer genius. Talk about putting a face on a service. One you don’t have to pay royalties too. One so popular it has its own online shop. One that plays its own starring role in a popular TV series: In at least one episode of each season of The Amazing Race competitors have to find a gnome and take it along to the next stop.

What better way to market and promote your service? What a clever way to do product placement right in a major series when you are an invisible service company that has no product! Yes, we hear the leg winners getting prizes compliments of Travelocity. But our heart reacts to the little gnome and makes us believe we will have support with us wherever we travel the world – a very, very important factor for most of us discount shoppers.

Travelocity  is thus awarded our top 3 star gold award for naming and branding.

Google Wallet is a wimpy retread of a name

Being passionate about names means that sometimes big company decisions make my blood boil…  as I have strong emotional reactions to stupidity and bureaucracy. And Google Wallet has definitely got me wondering what the heck were they thinking?

Are they all so young and naive at Google on this project that they don’t know Microsoft and others have already tried and failed with the Wallet name? Plus Google, on their own homepage for it, can’t decide whether it is written with a capital W or not. What on earth is that scooby do scribble logo all about?

But far worse, a wallet is something you store cash and credit cards in. You don’t pay with your wallet. And if you live outside the USA and are a lady, you don’t even own a wallet. Elsewhere ladies keep their money in their purse, which they then keep in their handbags. I wonder if Google programming geeks know the power women have shopping. Why cut them out from the get go?

Of course, this is an effort to fix a problem they have had since its inception with Google Checkout. What a dumb restrictive name that is. Didn’t even their basic market research tell them that Paypal is used for so much more than checking out? In fact it has become a major money transfer and online services payment system, in many cases without there being a shopping cart checkout procedure involved at all.

Oh well, when Paypal was young and poor and every dollar counted, they spent a few thousand on a naming consultant and now have this powerful brand name. At the time they were not owned by the big corporate eBay, which was probably to their advantage. They had to brand and position themselves correctly. And they didn’t have the big egos like Googleites who know it all.. but then make stupid mistakes and think they are invincible. No wonder so many products at Google don’t take off and 95% or more of revenue is still from their basic search ad revenues.

PS Wallets are from the pilgrims days.. to carry your coins in. Modern payment systems will be all electronic or smart card based… no leather needed. Maybe they can call it Google Silver, since they already have Google Chrome!

PPS Not quite as bad a name as Google+ though. See what the naming critic had to say about that over at Brighter Naming.

The Branding Blues

Occasionally, finding the right name for your company is the easy part.  Branding can be an incredibly tricky minefield to negotiate, especially for the perfectionist, and the company logo is certainly no exception.  You might initially consider the color of the logo to be unimportant but there are many experts who would fervently disagree.

An excellent example of why color matters is the recent Coca-Cola strategy.  For the first time in 125 years, Coca-Cola decided to change the color of their cans from red to white as part of a temporary and seasonal marketing campaign in the US.  Making the most of their iconic Christmas polar bear image, Coke launched the cans in October 2011 and planned to run them until February 2012.  Public uproar, for a variety of reasons, saw the plan come to an abrupt and premature end.  Coke was even accused by the Twitterati of changing the recipe and it wasn’t long before the red cans were back on shelves.

So what should we take into consideration when choosing the color?

Science And Psychology

Colors are meaningful to people, fact.  Green is eco-friendly, red is danger or passion, pink is more girl and blue is more boy.  Just some very obvious illustrations of a few of the associations we instinctively make through color.  Here are several other examples of this based on the analysis of marketing experts and strategists on the way we formulate opinions on colors:

YELLOW

We associate yellow mainly with sunshine, warmth and happiness.  It is frequently used in combination with the color red, bringing together the warmth and happiness of the yellow with the strength and energy of the red – DHL postal service, for example. MasterCard and Shell Oil are two other strong examples of this combination.

GREEN

Green is the color of grass and leaves and we therefore link it heavily with nature and an earthy freshness.  By visual association alone it tells us a company or organization cares about us and our planet – even if on further investigation that appears less likely.  The recycling logo, the universal symbol for Greenpeace, BP and Starbucks are all heavy on the color green.

BLUE

You don’t have to look much further than the emergency services’ uniforms to realize that blue is the color of trust and reliability.  Manufacturers of computer software and their parts (IBM, Intel, Microsoft) rely on our trust and, in turn, rely predominantly on this color to win it.

RED

Red is the color of strength, energy and vitality as well as speed, danger and passion.  Because it covers such a wide variety of associations it’s an incredibly popular logo color which makes it almost impossible to stand out against competitors.

PINK

Pink is one of the colors that seems to be constantly evolving.  Its natural leaning is toward feminine associations and is often used with perfumes and cosmetics.  Historically more masculine brands have avoided the color due to its adoption by the gay community but recent times have seen it go beyond that, particularly with the youth market.  Companies such as T-Mobile are leading the way with their bold use of the color which while vibrant and striking isn’t visually overpowering.

Color Blind

So you can see just how strongly consumers can associate with logos and their colors, which makes it important to get it right.  A US consumer study carried out by the University of Loyola, Maryland found that the color of a brand or logo increased visual product association by up to eighty percent.  When done properly it can bring a whole different feel to your business or product and even stand you out from the competition.

Choose a color that represents the aims of your product or service and where possible use a completely contrasting color to that of your leading competitor.  If appropriate, mix a number of colors to reflect variety, similarly to Ebay and Google.  If you’re exporting internationally, consider how other cultures interpret the meaning of colors and do your research to avoid giving the wrong impression.  Last but by no means least, consider how the colors will work right across the board – from letter headers and uniforms through to web design and packaging.  Don’t be blinded by all the options but rather embrace all the possibilities.

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Lily Porter is a writer and researcher living in London. Her work allows her to cover many different fields from eCommerce to high end retail, including writing for the buggy brand iCandy. In her spare time she likes to spend time with her young family and play badminton.

Tags: Branding, Images, Logos