Ideation, Brand Creation, Brand Naming and Storytelling

Ideation, brand creation, brand naming and storytelling are of course primary steps to realising an iconified brand.

The challenge and thrill of developing a new brand is one big reason we really love the work we do. Uncovering of layer after layer of possibility and the fresh opportunities it presents for expression and differentiation is something we never get enough of.With brand resonance in mind, we can help you create emotive, compelling stories and inspiring brand names.

The journey to make a lasting statement about your brand and creating a successful brand, starts with an idea but the purpose of the brand starts with your product or service offering. We work to pinpoint the relevant market segment and identify their unmet wants and needs in order to articulate a strong offering and pitch of about your brand’s value. Your brand’s message should encapsulate that value in emotional and benefit terms.

Ideation, brand creation, brand naming and storytelling are of course necessary for creating a recognisable and relevant brand identity. You may only want help with ideation, generating exciting concepts to build your brand around. Or you may want our help in new brand creation, and we will get involved in the whole process. Whatever you need help with to iconify your brand, start here.

We start with the offering, define a purpose and create the story for new brand creation.

We exist to build brands and love to come up with great brand ideas and the attendant communications that will Establish emotional connections with customers through your purpose and uniqueness, then activate it through a seamless multichannel journey to build a distinctive image. Ideation, brand naming and storytelling are key parts of this process.

We want to create the next generation of iconic brands in all categories. Brands that are resonant, have attitude and swagger and really speak to their target market. In a highly commoditised environment, almost nothing is new, except perhaps in the world of emerging tech – more on that here.
But if almost nothing is new, differentiation assumes ever greater weight and positioning becomes pivotal; your business will live or die literally more or less to the extent that it is possible to find a position for it in the mind of your tribe. A great product has value but that value is ascribed by the position it occupies in the mind of the people to whom we seek to attract.

That leads to the next point and of equal weight – the ‘goodness’ of/in your offering ultimately comes down to perception, so it’s subjective. It’s predicated on what the target segment you are targeting feel about, see and receive the offering, how well your offering fits them and their ideas about the world they inhabit. Make no mistake, most people are never sharing the same reality as the next group of people. This more than anything, determines the degree to which your offering is seen as remarkable.

New brand creation is the process that serves to determine these and other very important factors. Call us, let’s create the next iconic brand. 0208 191 9008.

Brand naming is a very important aspect of brand creation or rebranding. They help consumers form attachments and associations and an apt name, a mnemonic moniker or a tribute tag, can all increase the possibility of gaining new customers.The names on their own of course do not do all the work. The background work on purpose and positioning are of extreme importance but the name can be a powerful catalyst. At the very least, it shouldn’t confound or create consternation so it’s worth thinking about!

Like everything to do with brand development, naming should be part of a larger picture and larger strategy. Here at Iconify, we are strategic brand naming specialists and ensure our brand naming processes is one that takes account of the  and not just of the owner’s view of the customers but also that of the prospective or existing customers. Does it lend authenticity and cohesiveness to the core ideas and presentation of your brand?

There are some critical steps to the brand naming process, gone into in detail below but it starts of course with the ideation process. Creative and  collaborative. It’s often thought to be a simple process and it is useful to have a view of the key points of the process.

Discovery

The Iconify team will get to know your naming team and understand where on the brand development spectrum the business as a whole. We’ll want to understand who will be involved in the decision making and ensure there is representation from those who are customer facing. We’ll be asking why the business exists is and drill into your objectives, who your customers are, what you and your employees consider the primary concerns your business is facing so that you can start to assess what your brand stands for and any existing issues that may need to be addressed as part of the naming or larger strategic brand issue.

• What’s in a name? This depends on your lens. If you’re in this business for keeps, then it’s everything. It must be memorable, inspire emotion, perhaps a complex combination, in you as well as in your customers. It must convey something of your purpose and it should appeal to the people you plan to be in business with. Let’s help you do that.
• Articulate and agree upfront what the name should help achieve and what aspects of the brand image and ideas it needs to reinforce. Clarity on whether you may be interested in a wholly made up name, something derived from a recognisable concept or a metaphor or nouns, perhaps. Some people have no ideas, some have several but setting your goals will help us get to the right place sooner.

Brainstorming

• How to get to the name? We run workshops with leaders and nominated stakeholders in your organisation and evaluate available business and brand data to collaboratively develop ideas around which emotions, benefits and features can be developed.It’s not linear, it cannot always be structured and there will be several iterations, but like many creative processes that are strategically driven, it requires a building up concepts, paring back to the strongest naming ideas and really working with both heart and head. It’s fun but it’s challenging.With the right people in the room, it’s good to agree and discuss which words people feel describes your entire brand or parts of it, and explore psychographic prompts.

Back to the Beginning

If not already done, there should be a process of securing the brand image and values through the purpose, principles, proposition, position, and promise of the brand and the fundamental brand strategy around this. Brand naming relies heavily on being able to keep or discard naming ideas based on their resonance to previously articulated brand strategy and brand personality. This phase is critical as the outputs from it power the brand naming process and make it easier to streamline and get the most value out of, particularly in terms of defining the customer.

Naming Rules

Trout and Ries have outlined excellent and enduring rules around naming and once there is clarity on the strongest ideas and momentum on them, it’s time to start applying those rules.

Define the target audience using personas

These should already have been clarified in previous brand strategy phases and if nor, it should be done as soon as possible. When a candidate list of names is created, we will need to test them on your target consumers.

Brand naming tools and aids

There are automated name generator tools available. They have interesting results but they cannot intuit what lies at the soul of business like yours, the way a creative consulting team like Iconify can. They uses algorithms that will not ask the questions nor capture the responses from your brand naming team that are intrinsic to coming up with a fantastic brand name, so we do not refer to those tools in this section and we do not use them. The tools we use are strategic tools that allow the polishing and perfecting the list of candidate ideas of brand names that have been collected to aid the analyses of you and your competitors’ brands in the context of naming.

Name Testing and Due Diligence in the Brand Name Selection Process

• Once we have refined the list of names and have a short list, it is time to test them on personas developed and chosen and consider the locations within your brand, using this name will operate and compete.
• Trademarks – should you trademark, can you trademark and will you ace infringements with the name you choose? We will help to make these necessary checks to ensure the name we choose is secure.

Choosing a brand name

When all is said and done, this is the goal of the process. To choose a name that will help you change the game.

Sometimes, one name is the clear winner, when rendered in print, in writing, different colours and contexts, the way it sounds, whether it can be mispronounced, the meaning etc. At other times, there are contenders and we go through the process with you to get to a point of clarity and consensus on the name to set all your store by, literally. Where possible, dependent on the goals set at the outset, ascribe recognisable meaning or references.

We believe in storytelling as a great tool for getting to the heart of your target audience, one that will captivate and convince them. This is especially true in the new brand creation process or in a rebranding.

Your story is what your audience loves to believe about you based on their perception of your brand you build in their minds. It’s the story they love to believe about ‘why your product’,  the story they want to believe about what it does for them. It’s the story that drives how your product makes them feel and the intangibles that make them feel the way that allows them to believe your story. No two individuals are the same. No two individuals feel the same about everything or see the world exactly the same way.

How can you tell them a story they both believe? That’s the job. Let’s do it!

There are few critical considerations:

The ideation process is obviously a key part of storytelling and this is  a collaborative process we undertake with your team.Keeping the struggle that your offering helps your consumer with in focus and top of mine creates interest and drama, while using emotion about the benefits your brand delivers to connect, telling it at a psycho-graphic level to create the hooks all humans are looking for as a prompt to engage, help to reach your customer.

Ideas are catalysts for the deployment of huge potential, not least during new brand creation. Finding the idea that encapsulates your difference and ambition for your brand, that can engender brand passion and has the stamina to stay sustainable, is precious. The ability for that idea to be easily expressed is also important but the process needs to be accessible and done in as open a manner as possible. For new concept generation and capturing ideas, we focus on the big picture and workshop the best ideas with your teams and test them. The mission is to describe it visually as well as literally, in order to touch and move, influence and inspire or provoke and divide.