Naming System: Branded House vs. House of Brands

Naming can become a "house of cards" when there is no clear structure or strategy in place. Just like a house with multiple remodels and different styles, a company's naming can become disorganized and confusing through organic growth, mergers, and acquisitions. To avoid this, a naming architecture is needed, similar to a blueprint for a house. One popular type of naming architecture is the branded house, where there is one master brand and all other names are intuitive and descriptive. An example is FedEx, with FedEx Ground, FedEx Freight, and FedEx Office. This allows for easy addition of new services. However, if a competitor with a more innovative name emerges, a company may need to change its naming architecture to a house of brands, like Procter and Gamble, with distinct names for each product. Professional naming consulting firms can help create a naming architecture that makes sense for the company and provides flexibility. Other types of naming architectures include the endorser brand, where the brand name is placed after the product name, and decision trees can guide the naming process. It is important to avoid a mishmash of names and create a clear naming structure. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:00 Importance of Naming Architecture
• 1:50 Types of Naming Architectures
• 3:46 Choosing the Right Naming Architecture
• 5:30 Conclusion

Transcript

Mike Carr (00:08): 

So is your naming like a house of cards? And what do I mean by that? So think about you're in the market for a fixer upper home and you're going around and you're taking a look at some of these houses, and you walk into one that's gone through, let's say several remodels and it's just a disaster, right? Every room has a different style. Hallways are in weird places. The garage is an obvious, in a weird spot. There's an extra bedroom that's sort of been glummed onto the side of the house. Naming can become a house of cards too, through organic growth, through mergers, through acquisitions. You acquire new names or you add names to a growing portfolio, and somebody wants this style of name cool and hip, and somebody else wants a different kind of name. So what's the solution? Well, a naming architecture. Think about a blueprint. 

(01:00): 

If you could build a house from scratch, or if you're going through a major remodel, you'll have a blueprint that sort of lays out how all the rooms are going to work. They all flow together, they support one another. Well, that's sort of what naming architecture can do for your naming. And there are different types of naming architectures. So one of the ones that's been fairly popular, I would say for the last five to 10 years at least, is what's called the branded house, where you have one master brand, and then underneath that all your names are more intuitive and more descriptive and easier to understand. So they don't create any confusion. And an example of that might be FedEx. So you have FedEx Ground, you have FedEx Freight, you have FedEx office. And so it's pretty easy then to add new services to that naming architecture. 

(01:50): 

So let's say FedEx wanted to get into the Ocean Liner shipping business. What would you call that? Maybe FedEx Boat Boat makes a lot of sense. So you've got FedEx Ground, you've got FedEx Boat until a competitor comes along. And this competitor has got a new kind of ship. It's a big, huge ship on Hydrofoils, and it flies across the ocean. It zips and man, it can get your freight across the Atlantic or across the Pacific in one third the time. And they don't have a generic descriptive name like FedEx Boat. They have a sexy, cool, innovative name that's evocative and engaging and just screams speed, like one of my all time favorite names that I talked about in the last podcast too. So now you have FedEx Boat 

(02:45): 

Or Streaker. Which name do you think is more engaging? So now what do you do if you have to go back to the drawing board and change your naming architecture from a branded house to a house of brands? Procter and Gamble is an example of a house of brands. So they have very distinct names for each of their products. So they have tied a detergent, they have cheer, they have gain, they have bounce. And each name may be conveys something different about a benefit or the audience, the target they're going after. Is that the right way to go? That's where we can come into play or any professional naming consulting firm is help you lay out a naming architecture that makes sense for you, that gives you the flexibility. So maybe every now and then you need a new brand name, but in other situations you want to go with a more descriptive, intuitive family set of names. 

(03:46): 

The branded names can be really cool and hip and exciting, but unless you have the budget, unless you have the time to build that kind of brand, they can often be a disaster. And there are other kinds of naming architectures too. There's something called the Endorser brand, right? So you think about Polo by Ralph Lauren or Courtyard from Marriott. You're not putting the brand name in front, you're putting the brand name after. Well, why in the world would you want to do that? Well, there are lots of reasons. One reason is you want to protect that master brand. You maybe want the Marriott brand to be associated with perhaps a little more premium experience. Whereas courtyards more of that do it yourself. Maybe a little bit bigger room. You've got your kitchen and whatnot. And that's more for the folks that aren't interested in all those amenities. 

(04:37): 

So it might help you launch a new brand like Courtyard, but then once that brand's established that by Marriott isn't nearly as important. But part of what that naming architecture is going to give you is not just the blueprint, but it's also the process for how you can name things on your own. It's going to give you a decision tree. So your internal folks and crews are sort of guided in the right direction. So the point is, you need to avoid that house of cards, that mishmash mess. And one of the ways to do that is with the right naming architecture. And of course you can try to do that yourself. And there are some tools out there through ai. If you were to do a Claude three prompt on naming architectures right for you and go through a series of prompts, you'd probably get some pretty good ideas. Or you can hire a professional naming firm that maybe has done this for 40 years and has done just about everything wrong. Unfortunately more than once. But now we think we maybe know how to do it right, and we're happy to help you.