… That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1–2)
This is never more so than when asked about a brand or product tempting us to part with our hard-earned cash. To design a brand, a lot of thought must go into its name. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but I doubt many would want to smell it in the first place if it were named, say, “crapbud.”
It seems to me that there are three broad types of brand name:
- It means something (e.g. Apple, Dodge, Google, General Motors, Yahoo!, Facebook) – which may or may not have something to do with the product on offer.
- It looks like it might mean something (e.g. Flickr, Microsoft, FedEx, FCUK, IBM, Kleenex, Coca Cola) – which could be an acronym, a composite, or distortion of an existing word or phrase.
- It means nothing (e.g. Pepsi, Boeing, Dell) – which could be a sound or form of onomatopoeia, a proper noun or name, an archaic word or phrase, or simply nothing at all.
There are numerous well-known examples of each type (as there are understandably many un-known examples of each). Most importantly, there are no hard and fast rules governing what will work and what will not, with exceptions to the rules being more the norm than the rules themselves. In fact, for once in our recent history as consumers, there’s no trend-setting demographic: no baby-boomers born in the aftermath of a major international crisis, no hippies revolting against an establishment, no yuppies tacitly realigning themselves with one, no crowd-diving masses of unwashed Gen-Xers, and no ecstasy-popping ravers. Lately even the “blogosphere” of social-networking neo-geeks seems to be branching off into smaller and smaller subgroups.
Today we live in the wake of all those cultures and subcultures, making it extremely challenging for a new brand name to determine a target demographic. However, it is precisely for those reasons that it has never been more crucial to do so.
This is where the concept of niche comes in. Put simply, a niche brand is one that targets a very specific client base with a very specific product. Essentially, it’s saying: “We only do this one thing that only you might need.” What is important here is not the claim itself, but its subtext, which emphatically favors one extreme over the other in a series of dualisms.
- Deep over broad.
- Quality over quantity -oriented.
- Artistic over commercial.
- Emotional over intellectual.
- Passionate over rational.
- Specific over general.
- Idiosyncratic over generic.
- Personal over corporate.
- Crafted over mass-produced.
This flips the common adage of “jack of all trades, master of none” on its head. Instead, it claims to be a “jack of no trades, a master of one.” In fact it seems that one is the new many, or even the new zero. Socialism and multiplicity (“I belong to everyone.”) have fallen out of style, but more importantly so have nihilism and anarchy (“I belong to no one.”).
This means that a niche brand aiming for that one elusive bullseye runs the risk of missing it altogether and simply appealing to no one.
I would love to hear your thoughts. Please share them in the comment section below.