How to Make Your Name Memorable

Part of my job as a copy­writer includes, from time to time, cre­at­ing names for busi­nesses, prod­ucts, and ser­vices. Choos­ing a name may be the sin­gle, most impor­tant busi­ness deci­sion you will ever make.

We are con­stantly bom­barded with mar­ket­ing mes­sages. Lim­ited by people’s very short atten­tion span, your mar­ket­ing mes­sage has to be effec­tive to the degree that it must com­mu­ni­cate its essence and cre­ate top-​​of-​​mind aware­ness within an extremely short amount of time.

Names are often the best tools — and some­times the only ones — for accom­plish­ing this efficiently.

In the game of posi­tion­ing, your name has to stick firmly in the mind of the mar­ket­place and must do so instantly. While unique­ness is an impor­tant fac­tor, there are many other ele­ments that can help the anchor­ing process — ele­ments that help a name become mem­o­rable as well as cho­sen when a cus­tomer expe­ri­ences a spe­cific need or desire.

So, here are some sim­ple rules to fol­low when choos­ing a name for your com­pany or product.

What Does it Do?

To make a com­pany or prod­uct name truly mem­o­rable, it should con­vey its main fea­ture or ben­e­fit. It should be sug­ges­tive. Even if it’s unique, it should, in some way, com­mu­ni­cate what it is or does in one fell swoop.

If I give you the word “Die Hard” for instance, you will think of a bat­tery that dies hard. If I tell you “Jiffy Lube,” you will nat­u­rally assume that it’s a garage offer­ing oil changes in a jiffy. If I tell you “Band-​​Aid,” you will pic­ture an adhe­sive ban­dage that comes to your aid. If I said “Minute Rice,” you will assume it’s rice that cooks in minutes.

Sug­ges­tive names don’t have to be genetic, either. You can eas­ily cre­ate a unique name, which some­how com­mu­ni­cates its core ben­e­fit, its pur­pose, or at least its nature.

Think of names like “Kleenex” (clean­li­ness), “Windex,” (win­dows), “Dura­cell” (durable bat­tery cell), “Nico­derm” (nico­tine skin patches), “Cusi­nart” (kitchen acces­sories), “Pine-​​Sol” (pine sol­vent or cleaner), “Trav­e­loc­ity” (travel), etc.

Names that do not con­vey at least the basic nature of a com­pany will be eas­ily for­got­ten. This includes hard-​​to-​​pronounce words, abbre­vi­a­tions, and acronyms such as “MGF Hold­ings LLC.”

It also includes self-​​titled com­pa­nies such as “Michel Fortin Inter­na­tional” (which was, believe it or not, the name of my orig­i­nal com­pany close to 20 years ago — one that nonethe­less failed — and later changed to The Suc­cess Doc­tor, Inc.).

Ben­e­fits are par­tic­u­larly effec­tive because such a name would make a com­pany or prod­uct instantly appear as if it had some added value. When placed along­side a com­peti­tor offer­ing an iden­ti­cal prod­uct, a benefit-​​based name posi­tions itself above the com­pe­ti­tion in the mind.

As a result, the name will thus be quickly remem­bered when peo­ple make their deci­sion to buy.

Rhymes Move Minds

Since the inven­tion of the print­ing press, the writ­ten word has made it easy for us to for­get names. Con­se­quently, the process of rhyming has in the same way grad­u­ally fallen out of favor.

But strangely, what we remem­ber the most are, for exam­ple, the nurs­ery rhymes that we were told as chil­dren. In today’s mem­ory man­age­ment courses, peo­ple are told to use rhymes and word asso­ci­a­tion in order to improve their memory.

Rhyming is there­fore effec­tive because it is pleas­ing to the ear and helps to hook words eas­ily in the mind. Beyond ease-​​of-​​recall, rhyming also tends to add credibility.

Psy­chol­ogy pro­fes­sor Dr. Matthew McGlone, in his arti­cle “The Keats Heuris­tic: Rhyme as Rea­son in Apho­rism Inter­pre­ta­tion,” has found that rhymes not only make a phrase more mem­o­rable, they also make it more believ­able. Accord­ing to his research, peo­ple pre­ferred “woes unite foes” over “mis­for­tune unite foes” or “woes unite enemies.”

We are a beauty-​​driven cul­ture, and words are not excluded. The esthet­i­cally pleas­ing sound of a rhyme makes it cog­ni­tively eas­ier to assign greater per­ceived value, accu­racy, and believ­abil­ity. In other words, rhymes con­fer a greater sense of credibility.

As Dr. McGlone points out, “Peo­ple often attribute the aes­thetic qual­ity of a rhyme to the statement’s valid­ity, which sug­gests that peo­ple may unknow­ingly equate beauty (a rhyme’s singsong qual­ity) with truth.”

(Accord­ing to his research, while it may not be the only rea­son, a major fac­tor that played in O.J. Simpson’s acquit­tal dur­ing his mur­der trial was cer­tainly Johnny Cochrane’s inces­sant claim, “If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit!”)

While some names can eas­ily rhyme since they use mul­ti­ple words (e.g., “Blinds of All Kinds,” “Lean Cui­sine,” “Reese’s Pieces,” or “Ronald McDon­ald”), most names are made up of only one word.

If they can not rhyme at least within them­selves (e.g., “Rodeo,” “YouTube,” or “Coca-​​Cola”), then the job would be con­ferred unto their taglines — those small sen­tences that fol­low and com­ple­ment names.

For exam­ple, if I said “It takes a lick­ing but keeps on tick­ing,” you will prob­a­bly remem­ber this phrase if not instantly rec­og­nize the prod­uct with which this tagline is asso­ci­ated. And if the tagline rhymes with the name (such as “Uh, Oh! Bet­ter get Maaco!” or “When you need an edge, use Pledge”), the name will stick even more effec­tively as a result.

(For instance, a more recent exam­ple is Win­dows® Vista’s “The Wow Starts Now.”)

Repetition Resonates

What do “Saran-​​Wrap,” “Coca-​​Cola,” “Krispy Kreme,” “Chucky Cheese,” “Willy Wonka,” “Bar­bie,” “Google,” “Ham­burger Helper,” “Crispy Crunch,” “Block­buster,” and “Pipeline Prof­its” all have in common?

Rhymes are not lim­ited to vow­els (often called “foot rhymes”). Some­times, head rhymes (or “allit­er­a­tion”) can cre­ate the same effect as the other. Why? It is because they all do the same thing. It con­tains repetition.

The rep­e­ti­tion of con­so­nants give a name that pleas­ant and obvi­ously effec­tive singsong qual­ity. Rep­e­ti­tion makes a name mem­o­rable by mak­ing the pro­nun­ci­a­tion more sim­ple. In other words, it is def­i­nitely eas­ier to remem­ber a string of sim­i­lar sounds than it is to remem­ber a com­bi­na­tion of totally dif­fer­ent sound­ing words.

(Did you “see the softer side of Sear’s” lately?)

In fact, con­so­nants are great for many other rea­sons. Stud­ies show that strong-​​sounding or “choppy” con­so­nants (like the sound of “P,” “D,” “T” and “K”), used par­tic­u­larly at the begin­ning, help recall by adding emphasis.

They are called plo­sives. And accord­ing to nam­ing guru Steve Rivkin, who co-​​wrote “The New Posi­tion­ing” with Jack Trout, “It makes lin­guis­tic sense to start a brand name with a strong-​​sounding con­so­nant or plo­sive.”

Plo­sives, and rhymes and allit­er­a­tion specif­i­cally, help to make a name more mem­o­rable. These are called mnemon­ics. Mnemon­ics are not only use­ful but also effec­tive, par­tic­u­larly in the brand­ing process.

Bot­tom line, from the sim­plest prod­uct to the most abstract or com­plex tech­ni­cal ser­vice, a mem­o­rable name helps to make the com­pany or prod­uct mem­o­rable as well. In fact, it may even become gener­i­cized and used as the term that defines all oth­ers in its category.

(By the way, can you Xerox that doc­u­ment and FedEx it, please? If you don’t know how, just Google it.)

About the Author

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