Back in 2002 when my design agency of the time re-branded, creating a powerful brand name which was short, sharp and high energy was very much de rigueur.
Major advertising and design groups were merging and the new super-global agencies were growing at an extraordinary rate with their focus on Asia and the Far East for their acquisitions. This frequently saw individual agency names disappear to be replaced by the monolithic brand of the new parent suffixed with the country name.
At the other end of the scale, small independents were striving for profile through costly conventional media and PR and by getting to grips with the power of web search, helped by short and distinctive URL’s.
Then in 2004 a new phenomenon was to join the fray in the form of Facebook and social media was born.
Today, the digital touch-points for any brand have never been greater: organic and paid search, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok – all of which provide a gateway to a vast audience and an opportunity to forge a relationship with potential brand adopters.
And managing this social media interaction has for some time now been a discipline in its own right with the majority of brand owners investing in dedicated personnel or using specialist agencies to provide an outsourced service.
With on-line shopping well-established in people’s behaviour, Google, and social media follow our every move, presenting us with ads for recently searched products and brands at every opportunity.
All this is well and good but there are some indictors which suggest we’re starting to reach digital overload.
Our email and messaging inboxes are being constantly bombarded by numerous entities, both commercial and non-commercial and we’re becoming increasingly likely to discard the majority of communications without even reading them. Why is this?
There are a couple of theories here. The first is a backlash against always on, always available technology which is capable of interrupting us constantly in our daily lives. And there are some staggering statistics too. For example, if we break off from a complex task to view and respond to an email, it takes 10 minutes for us to refocus to the same level of concentration that we had prior to being distracted. No wonder many businesses are limiting ‘email on’ times to just certain hours of the day.
The other is lack of engagement and relevance. As we become increasingly targeted with communications from brands with whom we have created a frail ‘relationship’ by chance, we seek out only those brands which we value, brands which are not only relevant to us but brands for whom we are prepared to commit the most precious of commodities – our time.
Today, brands have to work harder than ever to earn the right to a persons time. Time to consider what’s on offer, how the product or service is better or more suited to their needs and indeed more relevant to them.
But given the visual noise that is the 21st century brand-scape, owning a distinctive, relevant and engaging brand is more important and ever.
And due to the sheer volume of new brands entering the market, registering potential names as a trademark has become extraordinarily difficult so the pressure is on for business owners or branding agencies in landing on a fabulous brand equity with appropriate domain name availability which can also gain registered trademark status.
Brand names and identities have always been the shorthand for the product, the ethos and the value system of the business it represents, but now, more than ever with consumer attention span under pressure, they have to work smarter then ever before to earn the critical, initial consumer engagement and the right to their time.
My expertise in successful brand name creation is well-used in delivering relevant, exciting and engaging brand names that strongly attract audience time for my clients and my methodology for assessing a successful trademark application is key here too.