While many brands seek to position themselves as timeless, in a digital landscape dominated by ever-changing social media memes and trends, timelessness is a rapidly disappearing quality.
The oldest brands in America, from JPMorganChase to Jim Beam, were named for their founders while initialisms like CNN and IBM were all the rage in the 1980s.
With the advent of the internet, brand-building went digital, and Spotify, Shopify, Grammarly, and Calendly are leading the way with cutesy, catchy names for tools and apps.
2024 finds us on the crest of another sea-change in naming and branding as AI and the metaverse begin to be integrated into our daily lives.
How will this new landscape change branding? And what does it mean for how businesses find, choose, and share their names?
How technology is changing the branding landscape
Traditional marketing techniques, including billboards, print media, and TV ads are increasingly supplanted by digital marketing for many brands. The online ad industry is now valued at $236.90 billion, overtaking the TV ad industry which stands at $228.9 billion.
While traditional marketing is still valuable, brands now need a hybrid approach that taps into the dynamic online landscape, where technology continuously reshapes the branding world.
In the last decade, the biggest impact has come from the proliferation of social media and the fact that a smartphone has landed in everyoneâs hands (okay, only 4.3 billion hands â 70% of the worldâs population over 15 years old). These are the new tools allowing marketers to reach anyone, at almost any time.
If smartphones and social media shook up the marketing industry, then in 2024 new technology is causing an earthquake: AI now allows for unprecedented personalization and new levels of engagement, while the metaverse is creating a completely new virtual commercial environment for brands to tap into.
These new tools and channels create opportunities for brands, as well as new challenges. While the internet may have failed to become the âgreat levelerâ as once anticipated, it has certainly leveled the playing field for brands. Lower barriers to entry have led to 90% of businesses saying their industry has gotten more competitive.
Against this background, brands need to work harder than ever to stand out, and choosing a powerful name has never been more important. So, letâs explore how you can choose a name that will allow your business to thrive in todayâs landscape.
Future-proof: Naming in the age of AI
A strong name will always build a deep, emotional bond with your target audience and emphasize your brandâs purpose as well as its USP (unique selling proposition). However, in the future, names will also have to fit into new virtual landscapes and be interpreted by a wide range of human and AI audiences. Hereâs how technology is changing naming.
Named by AI: Evolution of AI name generators
Before AI, business name generators combined keywords to create relevant, albeit uninspiring, brand names. Now, AI trained on real business data and naming trends, and given access to a complex genome of root words, metaphors, emotions, and visual imagery, can build creative and unique business names.
AI will complement rather than replace human ingenuity in the naming process by doing some of the creative legwork. More options, and more validation through data analysis, give founders and entrepreneurs better access to a winning name than ever before.
Be heard: The growing importance of voice search
One in four consumers now regularly use voice search, and voice assistants are set to outnumber people on the planet this year. While voice recognition technology continually improves, brands must choose names that are easily interpreted by voice assistants or risk getting lost in the noise.
Using plosives (/k/, /p/, and /t/ sounds) and prioritizing consonant-vowel-consonant structures will build more aurally comprehensible names. Brands should also test names aloud, both to a human and voice assistant audience.
Fintech apps like Klarna and Plum and challenger soda brand Olipop have distinct sounding names pivoting around these plosive sounds â the result is memorable names that voice assistants can easily interpret.
Going global: Names must be fit for a global audience
The internet allows brands to reach a global audience, and the metaverse will make borders obsolete when it comes to marketing. More than ever, brands should choose names that resonate with a global audience, using age and income brackets to determine their target audience rather than geolocation.
This factor overlaps with the prevalence of voice assistants: names should be pronounceable not just for English speakers, but for everyone. Secondly, names should be tested for negative connotations in other languages.
For instance, Nova, with its astral imagery, seemed like a good name for Chevroletâs new car â but it translates to âdoesnât workâ in Spanish, hindering sales in these markets.
Given the importance of Spanish speakers in an international market, particular care should be taken with names starting with âZâ, which in Castilian Spanish becomes a /th/ sound, and âVâ, which becomes a /b/ sound.
If only someone had told the namers of the international payment app Zing! With an explicitly global audience, Zing becomes audibly indistinguishable from the generic word âthingâ for European Spanish speakers.
Online presence: Importance of domain
Recent research found that 77% of consumers consider domain names important when choosing brands online. A domain name that matches the exact name of a business will be increasingly important for brands building credibility online, and close match social media handles are important for discoverability.
New domain extensions, such as .io and .co are gaining traction beyond .com domains, which remain the gold standard for both customer trust and memorability. Meanwhile, on social media, brands can pair action words like âgetâ and âmeetâ with their brand names for distinctive handles.
For example, social media toolkit Buffer began life at the domain bfffr.com before migrating to bufferapp.com. Neither domain facilitated a consistent customer experience for Bufferâs audience, who often contacted the wrong customer service.
Buffer was eventually able to secure the exact match Buffer.com, but acknowledged that their own success inflated the value of this domain name. Integrating domain name acquisition into your naming strategy will provide clear branding benefits and often save money in the long term.
Naming in the metaverse
Direct-to-avatar sales of virtual goods are already a $54 billion market, and the metaverse is likely to surge as a commercial opportunity for brands as demand for services and even B2B grows in virtual spaces.
This means names will need to be tested in the metaverse as well as real-world use cases, and names, graphics, and logos are likely to become increasingly merged. Using a creative spelling like Lyft? In virtual environments, the rogue letter choice could be made more memorable with dynamic effects such as spinning or glinting.
The future of naming
Technology is giving us new ways to discover names, new arenas within which to test them, and new parameters for choosing them, but the building blocks remain the same.
For now, humans are still, well, human â weâre not marketing to cyborgs⌠yet. That means your brand name has to build an emotional connection with your audience and evoke your mission and values.
Choosing your name is a balancing act: being catchy while meaningfully communicating your purpose; connecting with customersâ lifestyles while building an identity for your business.
Now, a new balancing act has been added to the mix: staying relevant in a rapidly changing technological landscape, without losing sight of the human touch.
