Testing our K-12 children is becoming more frequent and more rigorous. Mastering a wider variety of subjects is both stressful and boring. Pearson just rolled-out a new tool, called Zeos™, to change all of this on March 30th: The Zeos name is short and catchy. It is also fun as is the offering itself…
Gamification Engages Kids In Test Prep
“Zeos is a whole new world of standards mastery that prepares students with the skills they need to succeed on high-stakes assessments from inside a practice environment that’s anything but boring.” Read the rest
On Feb 22, 2012, Maritz Research intro
duced its Capella(tm) platform, a new way to measure the complete customer experience. This solution promises to revolutionize how you can improve your customers’ interactions with your firm, products, services and people. It is moving the industry away from tools that just report data to tools that help drive needed change to improve the customer experience.
We are proud to have played a part in the development of the Capella name. So what inspired the name?
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It’s always exciting to see a thoughtful article about brand naming in a mainstream, American staple like the New Yorker. The article, “Famous Names: does it matter what a product is called?” written by John Colapinto in the October 3rd, 2011 edition was certainly a fascinating read from beginning to end. Tools like Mind Maps and a diverse naming team are concepts that resonate with us. And although we agree that effective brand names can do a lot of the legwork for a new product or service, there were aspects of the prose that did not sit so easy with us. Read the rest
The Naru (Naming Guru) has emerged from the naming reflecting pool to finish sharing his/her branding perspectives from earlier this month.
5b.) Literal / descriptive names are better than emotional names when developing specific product names underneath a family brand.
While emotional, short & snappy brand names should establish strong connections with consumers (e.g., Northface, Nike), too many names of this ilk in one’s brand name portfolio tend to dilute brand building efforts. This type of name works well to establish a new product family’s tone and the brand’s “ambiance.” However, when a family brand adds additional products and line extension names, it is more effective to stay simple and use literal or descriptive names. At this point, it becomes more about communicating what the additional products are and their key benefits to better establish the family brand, than it is to risk creating potential confusion by launching more brand-like names within the family.
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One of the special educational services NameStormers offers is access to the sage naming philosophies of the revered Naru (Naming Guru). (The identity of the Naru is protected so he/she can go about day-to-day life without being chased down the street by marketers and branding strategists demanding one-on-one audiences.)
1) Think like a customer, not like a product developer. (Would you have ever named a computer “Apple,” a shoe “Nike,” or a coffee “Starbucks”?)
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“Consumers are buying private label food and drink products in greater numbers, typically because these products represent better value” (Mintel, The Private Label Food and Drink Consumer, Dec. 2010). But, is this causation or correlation? Are consumers knowingly buying private labels in larger quantities because of their perceived value, or is something else driving the increase?
This same Mintel study identifies several private label names (e.g., Target’s Archer Farms and Dominick’s/Safeway’s Lucerne) where more consumers believe they are actually buying a national brand than a private label.
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The Harvard Business Review published an article this month discussing two possible approaches when naming next generation products: 1. Brand-Name Continuation (or) 2. Brand Name Change.
Callaway Company launched its first Big Bertha driver in 1995 and then chose the brand-name continuation strategy: following with Great Big Bertha and then Biggest Big Bertha. This may be a cute and clever progression, but are there any downsides to this strategy?
Before answering that question note that many other companies like Nintendo followed the other approach, brand name change. In Nintendo’s case, they’ve launched the, N64, GameCube, and Wii gaming platforms. This approach involved a complete divorce from the previous name characterizing the product line. The obvious question is which one of these strategies is best? Read the rest
“Consumers are not buying based on price alone,” led a recent article from Brandweek. Personally, price is always a factor for me, but only decisive when all other things are equal. I agree – “there is a price-value formula consumers use to calculate brand differences” when deciding which brands to buy. Otherwise Chi straighteners ($100) or Nike running shoes ($150) wouldn’t sell. At some point, cheaper is not better – we all have a degree of price elasticity. Sometimes, people buy certain products simply because they’re better quality and therefore don’t mind paying a bit more for them.
This bolsters the case for building strong brands. Take organic products or products with a vested green interest for example. Read the rest
One of the biggest naming challenges can be in transnational markets, where a myriad of languages are spoken and customs are practiced. Besides being sure that you don’t recommend something in English that will offend somebody speaking Cantonese, there are fascinating linguistic nuances that both reveal a lot about what goes into a name and why that amount of thought is important.
Baby names
Never having gone through the birthing process myself, other than when I cried myself into the world as my parents’ pride and joy, I still appreciate the excitement, thought, and detail that goes into baby names. Do you want your kid to be a Thor or a Nathaniel? Despite the fact that I’m sure there are quite a few Nathanials who wind up being Thors (and vice-versa), parents tend to see names for future children as their futures themselves. I want my little girl to be wise (Sage, Mackenzie), or I want my son to be strong (Aaron, Emery). Read the rest
