Find a brand name: How to successfully discover it!

Listening to your gut feeling is sometimes not the worst idea. However, if you want to find a brand name that will make your brand successful, you should invest a little more time.

A brand name is the first thing that clients associate with a product. And in the best case, it is a positive one. It conveys experiences, emotions and memories.

And it helps to differentiate your product from the products of other manufacturers. Therefore, choose a brand name that is as positive as possible.

This article shows you what is important for a good brand name and when you should seek the help of a specialist lawyer.

Inhalt

1. Find a brand name by brainstorming
2. Find a brand name: Make a selection
3. Prepare the trademark application

1. Find a brand name by brainstorming

A brainstorming session like this can be enormously helpful in finding a good brand name. Get two groups of people together for this. Depending on the size of your company, it is advisable to get your employees together and, in the private sphere, friends, relatives and acquaintances.

Start brainstorming by asking the selected people what positive characteristics they associate with your product or service for which you are looking for a brand name. Make a note of all mentions on a large whiteboard.

The next step is to look at whether there are already competitors with similar products or services on the market. If this is the case, ask the following questions:

• What brand names have been chosen here?
• Do they work well?
• Are there any similarities to your ideas?

Now call your two brainstorming rounds back together and collect ideas for your brand name. Write them down on another whiteboard.

A good brand name should fulfill the following criteria:

1. It is as short as possible.
2. It is as memorable as possible.
3. It uses harmonious vowels.

Once you have found your personal top 10 brand names, it's time to do some research. It is advisable to consult a specialist lawyer here, as it can cost you a lot of money and time to register a brand name that may already exist or is not approved for other reasons.

For example, brand names may consist of a foreign-language word, but the German translation may not describe your product or service, otherwise you will find it difficult to have the brand protected. In any case, you should think internationally from the outset, because in some languages the translations of certain words have negative connotations.

There are numerous examples of this. For example, the car manufacturer Mitsubishi named one of its vehicles Pajero. A glance at a Spanish dictionary quickly shows why this was not a good idea. The same applies to the Ford Pinto. No man in Brazil would want to drive this car.

2. Find a brand name: Make a selection

Once you have a top 10, the next step is the selection process. At the end of this process, you should have found a maximum of three favorites that you can then test. Use the following checklist as a guide:

• Remove all brand names that have a descriptive function (see Section 8 of the German Trademark Act!).
• Remove all brand names that are not phonetically unique.
• Remove all brand names that are too long or complex.
• Remove all brand names that show similarities to other brands.

How many brand names are still on your list? Significantly fewer? Good! Now you can check the subliminal psychology. For example, an i at the end of a word sounds cute, while an o indicates something big and important.

If your brand name also contains a color, it should also match your values. Green is a good color for anything to do with the environment. Black doesn't work so well here.

As soon as you have managed to reduce your name suggestions to three ideas, you should briefly test how well the potential target group can remember the respective names.

To do this, either use a survey platform or briefly present the three names to your two test groups and then call them together again after a week. Which of the three names can most people still remember?

3.  Prepare the trademark application

As soon as you have found a brand name, it is advisable to entrust a specialist lawyer for industrial property protection with the trademark registration. He or she will first check whether the chosen brand name does not infringe trademark law, whether it is already being used in any form and what the chances of trademark protection are in general.

The trademark is then registered. Trademark protection then exists from the day after registration.

Finding and registering a brand name is more difficult than you might think. There are too many pitfalls on the way to trademark protection. A specialist lawyer for industrial property protection can effectively guide and support you on the path to a brand name. This will save you valuable time and money.

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