Chapter 7

Naming Your Brand

In This Chapter

Realizing the power of a great brand name

Brainstorming, choosing, and vetting your brand name

Claiming your name on the web

Registering and protecting your name

If you haven’t yet named your brand, you just opened to what may be the most important chapter in this book.

Naming your brand is by far the most challenging, momentous, and necessary phase in the process of branding. Before you can proceed to develop a brand identity, you need a name that’s appropriate, available, appealing, and enduring. Truly, naming a brand is as important — and as difficult — as naming a baby.

Other identifiers of your brand — including your logo, tagline, and color scheme — may change over time, but unless you totally rebrand, your name will remain pretty much intact. You may evolve it (Coca-Cola to Coke or Federal Express to FedEx come to mind), but from the day you announce it, your name will likely remain the key that unlocks your brand image in the minds of customers. So you have to get it right the first time around.

This chapter sheds light on the value of your brand name, how to recognize the characteristics of a good name, and how to come up with and protect a name that works well from the start and long into your successful future.

What’s in a Name?

The right name distinguishes you from all others, and ideally, it establishes your personality, brand character, market position, and the nature of your offering. The very best name accomplishes the following objectives:

• It reflects the brand character you want to project.
• It’s descriptive of your offering.
• It creates an association to the meaning of your brand.
• It’s easy and pleasant to say.
• It’s unique and memorable.

Not all great names score a ten in all areas, but nearly every good name scores well on most fronts, and only a rare few successful names strike out completely on any one of the preceding characteristics. Use this section to guide your selection — or creation — of the name for your brand.

What the right name does

The right name establishes your brand from the day you announce it and grows with your vision as you evolve into new market areas, new geographic regions, and even new product areas.

In the same way you wouldn’t want to give a baby a name that doesn’t transition to adulthood, you don’t want to give your brand a name that hinders its future development. For that reason, most forward-thinking marketers avoid names like First Avenue Dry Cleaning, for instance, unless they’re absolutely certain that they’ll always be on First Avenue and that they’ll always focus on dry cleaning as their primary offering.

In choosing your name, the following considerations outweigh all others:

• Your name should convey or support your desired brand image.
• Your name should convey or be consistent with your brand promise.
• Your name should have the capability to grow with your brand and to appreciate as an asset that can be harvested through premium pricing, through licensing, or even through the sale of shares in your business or the outright sale of your brand name to a future owner.

Convey or imply your brand image

If you’re at all unclear about your desired brand image, flip back to Chapter 6, which leads you through the process of crafting the statement that steers all decisions regarding the expression of your brand and the image you create in the marketplace.

Your brand statement follows this framework:

[Your business] promises [your target market] that they can count on us for [unique attribute or benefit] delivered with [information about the character, voice, and mood you convey].

A name that doesn’t directly or obviously reflect your brand statement — that doesn’t obviously convey or imply the nature of your target market, your brand promise, or your brand character — can turn out to be a spectacularly strong brand name if (and this is a big if) you’re willing and able to invest the time and marketing budget to win awareness, acceptance, and enthusiasm for what it means. As proof, consider names such as Apple, Google, and Amazon, along with many of today’s other best-known brands. The names themselves don’t convey promises or differentiate offerings, yet they successfully label megabrands thanks to terrific awareness-building and brand-management programs that have injected the names with meaning in consumers’ minds.

At the other end of the spectrum, consider great brand names like Dunkin’ Donuts and Southwest Airlines, which instantaneously convey their brand purposes even to those who have never heard the names before.

Either approach works, but the smaller your marketing budget, the wiser you are to settle on a brand name that automatically conveys your brand essence. Doing so lessens the need for extensive and costly education to create meaning for your name.

Advance your brand promise

Your brand name should convey, imply, or support your brand promise. There’s no hard-and-fast rule about the degree to which your name must reveal your promise. However, if your name only hints at what you do and offer, then you’d better be prepared to invest marketing time, effort, and money to tell the story not communicated by your name.

Some brands put the brand promise right into the brand name. Well-known examples include

• Jiffy Lube service centers
• DieHard automotive batteries
• Terminix pest control
• Lean Cuisine entrees
• Powerade sports drink
• Coppertone suncare products
• Miracle-Gro plant food
• Ziploc storage bags
• Clear Eyes eye drops

Some brands imply the promise that customers can count on through names that are consistent with the benefits they deliver. Examples include

• NETFLIX: Movie and TV-show subscription service
• Victoria’s Secret: Romantic, stylish, and feminine lingerie
• Foot Locker: Athletic footwear and apparel
• Sunkist: Fresh fruit
• The Home Depot: Home improvement retailer
• Legalzoom: Personalized online legal solutions

Other names neither convey nor imply the brand promise. Instead, they support the brand’s commitment by being consistent in character and presentation to the brand’s offering. Here are a couple of examples:

• Yahoo!: The name doesn’t say or imply search engine, email, web hosting, or news. Nor does it convey a brand promise. Instead, the name communicates an experience that’s fast, fun, and successful.
• Twitter: The name doesn’t say or imply a microblogging social network that “helps you create and share ideas instantly, without barriers,” which is what the company promises. Instead, as co-founder Jack Dorsey told the Los Angeles Times, the name encapsulates what the product is by conjuring up “a short burst of inconsequential information” and “chirps from birds.”

Regardless of whether your promise is directly presented, implied, or simply supported through your brand name, make sure it’s pegged to a commitment that’s small enough to keep but big enough to grow with your business. You can probably think of a brand that promised to be the “hometown” business only to chase opportunity in a nearby market area where, eventually, the headquarters moved and the hometown promise evaporated.

Become an asset

Good brand names accumulate value that pays off in the following ways:

• As a well-managed brand gains awareness, its promise becomes trusted, and that trust carries a value for which consumers are willing to pay a premium, leading to stronger sales and higher profits.
• As a well-managed brand gains market recognition, it becomes valued by other marketers who want to cross-promote with or even license the brand name to benefit from its strong and positive image, leading to marketing and business opportunities.
• As a well-managed brand grows into a marketplace success story, others want to own part of it, at which time the brand builder can harvest the brand’s value through a public offering or a complete or partial sale.

For advice on leveraging your brand’s value, see Chapter 15. But first, put yourself in position to build your brand into an asset by following these naming tips:

• Choose a name that can grow with your brand.
  • Avoid names that limit your product range. Unless you’re certain that you’ll never want to sell anything other than lamps, for instance, be careful about calling yourself The Lamp Store.
  • Give your brand some geographic elbow room. The advantages of not tying your name to a single geographic region are twofold. By avoiding a name like Milwaukee Web Services, you allow your business to expand into new market areas without the burden of an out-of-town name or the need for a new name altogether. You also you keep yourself out of the lineup of all the other business names that start with Milwaukee in business directories.
• Especially if you think you may someday sell your business, choose a name that isn’t your own (referred to as Me, Inc. in the branding business). At the time of sale, a good portion of your brand equity resides in goodwill, which is the positive value of your name and reputation. If your brand name is your name and more closely affiliated with your image than with the image of your business offerings, buyers will probably want rename it, and they’ll want to pay less as a result.
• Choose a name that’s unique, memorable, and easy to recall.

When naming happens

Most brands get their names at one of the following three times:

• When a business or product is being introduced for the first time

  This is when most brands are named and is likely the situation you’re facing as you read this chapter.

• When an existing business or product name is burdened with a negative connotation

  For example, Kentucky Fried Chicken renamed itself KFC, freeing it to market offerings beyond the range of fried foods and chicken. Another example is Phillip Morris, which became Altria to distance itself from its tobacco heritage.

• When growth opportunities for a business or product are limited by the nature of its existing name

  For example, Federal Express became FedEx, giving itself a shorter name that better exemplifies the company’s speed promise while at the same time deemphasizing the word “federal” to better reflect the brand’s worldwide market and independent, nongovernment ownership. Likewise, the charge card in your billfold didn’t always carry the brand name VISA. It used to be called BankAmericard, a name that was abandoned in the mid-1970s in favor of a name that was shorter, instantly recognizable, pronounceable in any language, and had no country or language affiliations.

Types of names

The brand name selection process usually results in a name that fits into one of the following categories:

• The owner’s name or names: An owner’s name can serve as the basis for a business name, such as Joe Smith’s Piano Tuning Service. On a far larger scale, an owner’s name (or two owners’ names, in this case) can serve as the basis for a merged business name, such as ExxonMobil.

  Especially for small business sole proprietors, forming a business with the name of the owner is the default naming approach. You simply add words that describe the nature of your business to your own name and just like that Jane Smith becomes Jane Smith Accounting or Jane Smith Portrait Photography. The name is likely to be available and easy to register with government offices (with no need for the search-and-protect steps detailed in “Catch It If You Can: Claiming Your Name” later in this chapter). The name is also capable of advancing the promise that the owner personally stands by the company’s products or services.

  The downside to using an owner’s name is that without significant marketing, personal names rarely develop the kind of widespread awareness and sky-high credibility that translate to premium pricing and future sale value.

• Abbreviation names: People think of easy-to-recall names like IBM, AOL, or AFLAC and believe that a similarly short abbreviation or acronym will work for them. In each of these examples, though, the businesses started with longer names that only after extensive marketing became the initials that mean something to consumers today. Unless you can invest accordingly, avoid this route. Either you’ll end up with a string of initials that mean little to consumers or you’ll end up with a generic name like AAA Equipment Rental, which exudes no personality or promise and has only one benefit — it appears first in phone book listings that today’s customers rarely consult. That’s hardly a brand-building strategy!
• Geographically anchored names: These are names that work to capitalize on a known local landmark or geographic indicator. Think Central Coast Bank, Pleasantville Grocery, and Cascade Mountain Insurance. Most names of this kind blur into a group of like-named entities. A few stand out as esteemed brands (kudos to Pebble Beach Resorts) but only after significant investments of time and money to market the name into a distinguished brand.
• Descriptive names: These names describe what the brand offers or promises. U-Haul, Budget Rent A Car, Dropbox, Purex, and Curves are examples of descriptive names.
• Borrowed interest names: These names use existing words that don’t directly reflect the brand’s offerings or promise but can be linked to a brand’s essence through marketing efforts rather than through direct translation. Good examples include Apple, Nike, Yahoo!, Skechers, and Starbucks.
• Fabricated-word names: These names combine acronyms, words, or syllables to form previously unknown words and brand names. Google, Verizon, Microsoft, and Mozilla are all are easy to repeat, easy to recall names that have been imbued with meaning thanks to their branding and marketing efforts. Because they’re newly invented words, fabricated names are usually available for trademark protection, and the domain names that contain them are likely to be available, too.

Fitting your name to your brand architecture

Before you settle on a brand name, consider how and where the brand will fit within your business, which is known as brand architecture (see Chapter 2).

Most brands fit into one of these architecture categories:

• Independent brands: These stand-alone brands represent every offering and activity of the organizations they represent. Most small businesses create independent brands for the simple reason that they’re easier to build, manage, and market. At the same time, many very large organizations also present all their offerings under a single brand. The Red Cross is a good example.
• Master-brands with parent-driven brands: Parent-driven brands are closely and very visibly tied to the name and credibility of the top-level master brand. For example, a nonprofit organization that hosts a well-known annual fundraiser probably may treat the yearly event as a parent-driven brand of the organization. On a larger scale, GE is a master brand with an array of parent-driven brands including GE Energy, GE Aviation, and GE Profile, all connected to the parent brand by the brand name GE. Apple is a master brand that connects the brands for iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad to the master brand through consistent use of the Apple logo.
• Multiple product-driven brands: Some businesses introduce each major product as its own brand. The behemoth example is P&G, but smaller businesses also build multiple brands. Think of the chef with three individually named and branded restaurants as an example.
• Brand extensions: These brands piggyback on the recognition of an established parent brand while carrying the brand into a new and different market segment. A few examples are Arm & Hammer Deodorant, Starbucks Coffee Liqueur, and RainX Windshield Wiper Blades. (We tell you more about brand extensions in Chapter 15.)

Most successful smaller businesses build a single, independent brand — for good reason. Building, managing, protecting, and consistently conveying a brand takes time, money, and tremendous dedication. Creating multiple brands doubles or triples the branding work and often results in a lack of focus on the primary brand that drives the company’s success.

Rather than create multiple brands, build a single, dominant brand that presides over a number of product lines, events, fundraising campaigns, or other entities. As you name each new offering, be sure that the name you select complements the promise of your top-level brand. If it doesn’t, throw it out of the running and move on to other names that fit with the identity and character of the brand under which all other products fit.

Naming advice to follow

As you brainstorm name ideas, scan Table 7-1 for a list of qualities remarkable names have in common as well as naming mistakes to avoid.

Table 7-1 Naming Advice

Picking (or Inventing) Your Brand Name

When it comes time to name your brand, get ready to invest some time and even some money, especially if your brand’s going to span a large market area, compete against major brand names, or support a major vision that will take decades to achieve and therefore will live long into the future.

Whether you choose to name your brand with or without professional assistance from a marketing firm or branding group, involve your own team in the process by following these steps:

1. List the attributes you want to reflect in your brand name.

   Consider the following:

   • What terms out of your brand statement do you most want your name to convey, reflect, or support?
   • What aspects of your brand promise would you like your name to advance?
   • What words define the character you want your name to convey?
2. Bring together key business partners, managers, and staff members and ask them to answer the three questions listed in Step 1. Then ask them what kinds of names come to their minds.

   Before you begin to brainstorm names, or before you involve professional assistance, this initial internal reaction focuses you on the brand essence, attributes, and character that seem true to those who are most involved with your business and its differentiating attributes.

3. Decide who will actually choose your name.

   Will the final choice rest with a single person or with the team? Will it require a unanimous vote or will the majority rule? Will one person have veto power?

4. Involve all who will have a say — especially the key decision maker — in the naming process.

   You’re setting yourself up for trouble if the person who will ultimately approve the name fails to participate in the process and lacks understanding of the reasons behind the name ideas being presented.

Rounding up good ideas

Whether you’re naming your brand on your own or involving a branding consultant or marketing firm, begin by giving thought to the kinds of names you think do and don’t suit the character and vision of your brand.

Consider holding a retreat to get creative ideas flowing. Not every idea will be a good idea; that’s the nature of brainstorming. But the process produces the kinds of names you think fit well with your business. From there, you can narrow down the choices, or you can turn your initial ideas over to a branding consultant or marketing firm for professional advice.

Brainstorming

At the beginning of a brainstorming session, participants usually are shy about getting creative or throwing out what may seem like wild ideas. Ease people into the process by starting the session with a discussion of what kinds of feelings the participants would like people to have when they hear your brand name, whatever it turns out to be.

Have an easel or white board available and write down every emotion you hear. Then group them into categories, such as reputation, expertise, features and benefits, or any other labels that seem to fit over clusters of words that emerged from the discussion.

Then leave the categories in sight as you begin to brainstorm names that may induce the desired responses.

As you brainstorm name ideas, encourage creativity by following these tips:

• Give every idea its time and space. The quickest way to kill creativity is to shut down ideas with comments like, “That’s been done before,” “That won’t work,” or “That’s not what we’re looking for.”
• When an idea seems to come out of left field, encourage alternatives. Prompt ideas with comments like, “What other words describe that same concept?” and “How can we say that and fit within our brand character?”
• Probe ideas. Ask participants to describe the underlying meaning of the names they’re presenting. Sometimes in their descriptions they’ll uncover other names that are even more appropriate.
• Encourage alternative perspectives. Ask participants to stand in the shoes of others and to think of how they’d describe your brand from the point of view of a child, a celebrity, an older consumer, or others who may not be represented by the brainstorming group.

Record the results of your brainstorming session and review them as soon after the session as possible. Circle the ideas that match your brand statement. They make up the short list that you work from as you narrow choices and begin to assemble name ideas (see the section “The hard part: Narrowing your list to the best options” later in this chapter).

Finding inspiration

To find a unique name, reach outside your usual work environment. Give the following ideas a try:

• Go to the kinds of places where your target customers spend time. If they eat in fast-food restaurants, go place an order, take a table, and observe. If they’re avid shoppers, go downtown or to the mall. If they commute using mass transit, buy a ticket and take a ride or two.

  As you observe target customers in their surroundings, jot down names of books they’re reading, the shopping bags they’re carrying, and the labels they’re wearing. Your discoveries may unlock ideas for a brand name that fits well with the interests and mind-set of your customer base.

• Scan magazines and websites that you think your customers read. Note ideas, names, or words that you think fit your brand character.
• Also scan magazines and websites that are well outside the interest area of your customers. If your customers are interested in fashion, go to a fish and bait shop, for instance. Look around at brand names. You may land on some interesting new concepts.
• Look through dictionaries and a thesaurus. In the English dictionary, look study the origins of words that describe your brand, seeing if they trace back to Greek, Latin, or other roots that may provide the basis for brand names. In international dictionaries, look for translations of words describing your brand promise or attributes that may make great names. In the thesaurus, find synonyms for words that describe your brand.

As part of your observation, take note of the kinds of names that catch your eye or ear. Are they names that convey or imply promises, names based on borrowed interest, or names that are fabricated from syllables and sounds to create one-of-a-kind new words? Your findings can guide your name decision.

The hard part: Narrowing your list to the best options

Narrowing potential names down to a few best choices is tough and emotional. You know that you’re making a lasting decision, and until the name is announced and met with great fanfare, you can’t really be certain that it’s the ideal name.

When creating your short list of names, follow this advice:

• Include only a few top contenders unless you’re planning to undertake a trademark search, in which case you need a longer list because many will be knocked out during the legal process.
• Keep your top name contenders tightly within your naming committee until you’re ready to reveal your name selection. Then (and only then) you may want to show also-ran names as part of the rationale you present to build support for your top choice.

Not even the greatest name contenders can hold up to the scrutiny that follows a leak during water-cooler conversations. For that reason, don’t let the names out of your committee until you select one and it’s ready for presentation, backed by all the rationale for why it’s a great choice and how it will excel in your marketing arena.

Putting your top contenders through a preliminary test

When you arrive at a short list of names you believe fit your brand well, put each one through the following series of questions and investigations.

• Does it accurately depict or support your desired brand image?
  • Does it convey, imply, or accurately reflect your differentiating attributes and brand promise?
  • Does it reflect your brand position? For instance, if your position is being the most professional, creative, responsive, efficient, or prestigious in your marketplace, does the name sound adequately professional, creative, responsive, efficient, or prestigious?
  • Is it a credible reflection of your business today? For example, if you’re a local firm, including the word global in your name may be quite a stretch.
  • Can it grow with you as you achieve your highest aspiration and the vision of your business?
• Is it easy to say?
  • Write each leading name on a piece of paper and ask a few confidants to read it out loud. Do they pronounce it correctly? Does it sound pleasing to the ear? (To avoid feeding the internal gossip mill, ask people outside your business.)
  • Pretend that you’re answering the phone and use the name in a greeting. (“Good morning, XYZ Company. May I help you?”) Does it roll off the tongue, or is it awkward to say?
  • Pretend that you’re introducing yourself as the founder or president or chief inventor of the company. How does the name sound in professional conversations?
• Is it easy to spell?
  • Say each name candidate out loud to others and ask them to write it down. Do they spell it correctly?

    If the name’s misspelled from time to time, you may well select it anyway, deciding that you can market your way around the problem. But make note of and save the various misspellings. As you establish your online identity, you can try to grab domain names for each of the erroneous spellings and automatically redirect them to your official website. (You can find more on the topic of establishing digital presence in Chapter 10.)

• Is it unique?
  • Enter the name in several search engines and scan the results to see if the name is already in use by other businesses — and in which product categories and market areas.
  • If your business serves a regional or local market area, search phone and business directories to see if similarly named businesses already exist. Also, conduct the same search in industry directories.
• Does it translate well? If your business will involve e-commerce or serve international markets, does the name you’re considering have a positive connotation in other cultures? If you think you’ll be targeting specific international audiences in the future, ask people familiar with the languages and cultures of those groups to react to the name. If you don’t know anyone to ask, consider asking a university language professor for input.
• Do you like the name? If the name feels awkward to say or write, realize that you may simply be resisting a new idea. The fact that it sounds different is good and even necessary to stand out in the crowded market environment. If the name truly rubs you the wrong way, though, back away early and before you build your brand around it.
• Can you protect it? The final section of this chapter describes how to check availability, stake your claim, obtain your domain name, and protect your brand with a trademark if it will be crossing state and national borders. If the name’s not available or protectable in your market area — whether that’s your hometown, state, region, country, or the world — the sooner you know, the sooner you can strike it off your list and move on to the next best choice.

Building consensus around your top-choice name

To win support for your name selection, keep your decision makers in the loop throughout the process so that, as a top choice emerges, they’re familiar with the name, the rationale for its selection, and the ways that it works on behalf of your business.

As you reach outside your decision-making circle to present the name to your entire company, turn to Chapter 9 for help launching your brand internally.

Checking for domain name availability

Your domain name is the string of characters that people type into their web browsers to reach your site. Ideally, you want your domain name to read www.[yourbrandname].com, or www.[yourbrandname].org if you’re branding an organization, but in today’s crowded online world, getting the domain name you want is far from guaranteed.

For an initial test of availability, open a web browser and enter the domain name of your dreams in the address line. Based on what you learn, here’s what to do next:

• If you get a message that no such page exists, you’re in luck. Open one of the many domain name registrar sites, conduct a free name search, to confirm that the name is available, and then claim it, quickly. Online real estate moves fast. Popular registrars include NetworkSolutions.com, GoDaddy.com, and Namecheap.com, among many others. Even if you end up choosing a different brand name, the low cost of registering and protecting your top contending names just in case is miniscule compared to the value of owning the domain name for what may become your winning brand-name choice.
• If your initial search takes you straight to a web page, the domain name you want is already taken — sorry. Likewise, if the registrar service reports that the name you want is not available with the top-level domain or suffix of .com, you have a couple of choices for what to do next.
  • One option is to bid to buy the name. It may be owned by someone willing to part with the address — for a price. Be aware, however, that this can be a time-consuming and costly process.
  • Another option is to buy the name with an alternate top-level domain, such as .net or .info. We suggest that you avoid this approach, and here’s why: Rather than conducting an online search to reach your website, most people searching for your business for the first time will take a shortcut by typing your business name plus .com into their browser address lines. If someone already owns the brand name you want, plus .com, many users will reach the .com version by accident. Oops.
  • A third option, but not a good one, is to buy some clever variation of your name by adding hyphens or using alternative spellings. For instance, if cookiesandcream.com is already taken you could try to buy cookies-and-cream.com or cookiesandcreme.com. But people won’t remember how to make the adjustments, and as a result, they’ll find your competitor’s site while they’re looking for yours.

Turn to Chapter 10 for more information on how to establish your brand online.

Catch It If You Can: Claiming Your Name

After you select your name and put it through the wringer to see if people can spell it, say it, remember it, find it online, and relate well to it in your home culture as well as in other cultures, it’s time to begin the process of registering and protecting the name to ensure that it will belong to you and only you for as long as it lives in the marketplace.

Conducting a name-availability search

Before taking the final plunge to adopt and start building a brand around a name, jump through some legal hoops to make sure the name isn’t too similar to an existing business name or trademark in your market area.

Conducting a name-availability search on your own and without legal help isn’t enough to assure that the name you want is available, but it helps you discover which names to rule out because they’re definitely already in use. With that knowledge, you can create a Plan B before investing heavily in a name that may not work for your brand.

Follow these steps as you conduct an initial name-availability search:

1. Conduct an online search for the name.

   Check to see if the domain name featuring your top-choice brand name is available, following the advice in the preceding section. Also conduct a web search to see if another business already uses the name, even if it doesn’t own the domain name.

   If the name already labels another business, you may still be able to use it as your own so long as your market area or industry doesn’t overlap with that of the other business. However, proceed with caution and the understanding that you’re risking marketplace confusion by giving your brand the same name as another business’s brand.

2. Search your state’s database of registered business names.

   This database is kept by the office of your secretary of state, corporations division, or corporate registry, depending on the state or region in which you’re headquartered.

   Banks require that you have an approved name before opening a business bank account, and they can usually tell you exactly which government office to call for name registration assistance. If the name’s available, you can complete a registration form, pay a fee, and protect the name for your use in your immediate market area.

3. Screen the name with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which maintains a massive database of pending, registered, and expired federal trademarks.

   Go to www.uspto.gov, click on Trademarks, then click Search Trademarks, and enter the name you want. For global and international information, go to www.uspto.gov/main/profiles/international.htm.

Treading the trademark ropes

After you register your business name with government offices in your local market area, you’re safe to use your name, but your name isn’t safe from use by others outside your immediate market areas.

If you plan to do business across state or national borders, a trademark prevents others from infringing on your identity by using a similar name, logo, or other identifying feature of your brand.

You can obtain extensive information and advice on trademarks from these online resources:

• U.S. trademarks: http://www.uspto.gov
• Patent offices throughout Europe: patlib.european-patent-office.org/directory/overview.pl
• Establishing a trademark in a number of countries: www.uspto.gov/main/profiles/international.htm

Anyone who tells you that the arena of trademarks is an easy one to navigate is wearing rose-colored glasses. We’ve been through it enough times to strongly advise you to look over the sidebar “Scheduling a root canal for your brand name” and to seek legal assistance from an attorney who specializes in intellectual property and trademark protection.

Your business attorney probably can assist you or refer you to a good legal specialist for help with getting a trademark.

Changing Your Name, If You Must

This short section includes two important pieces of advice:

• Don’t change your name unless you have to. If you have to, then follow every single step in this chapter because you’re basically starting the brand naming process from scratch.
• Do adjust your name, if necessary, to attune it to changing marketplace or business conditions. Follow the advice in Chapter 16.

Quoting Socrates once again, “The giving of names is no small matter.” After you clear the hurdles of name selection, availability search, domain name and government registrations, and establishing legal protections, hold a celebration and then get ready to give the name a face — in the form of a logo, which is what Chapter 8 is all about.