Brand Creation Tuesdays & Thursday, Week 2 - The Brand, Part 2

So, after reading the previous 3 articles in this series (links below), you've identified a gap in the market, guesstimated a market in the gap, decided on how your brand will stand out ( = have a reason to exist at all), hired someone who will argue with you about what the brand should and should not be, and taken a deep dive into the wants and needs of your target market.

Your next step is the name.

It is staggering how many new brands make it to market with truly terrible names, given that, when it's a new brand, you get to choose the name. The name is something you really, really need to have someone - business partner, consultant, employee, loved one - giving you an external perspective. It must look easy-ish to pronounce, even if it's in a foreign language. "St Germain" is a good example - most people will have a stab at it. Ditto "Moet et Chandon". But if your surname is "ó Domhnaill", you might not want to name your new Irish whiskey brand after yourself, even if it's your great-great-grandad's recipe. People will pause to pronounce it, then usually give up rather than run the risk of mispronouncing it, and then order easy-to-pronounce Jameson or Powers or Paddy or Bushmills instead.

And it could be worse: I regret to inform you that Matthew McConaughey and his bride have just launched a tequila brand named Pantalones with a video showing both of them riding motorcycles, walking hand in hand and drinking tequila, all while trouserless. Why did they do this? Well, because they're rich, attractive, famous people, it's presumably hard for their friends and colleagues to point out to Matthew and Camila that their choices are bonkers. Matthew, if you're reading this, DM me.

(But what about Bruichladdich, Philip? Or Laphroaig? Or Bunnahabhain? Fair point. Those brands exist and are successful. But you are starting a brand and that's like playing the lottery. The more good decisions you make, the more tickets you get, increasing your chances of winning. There's only one tricky-sounding brand name in the 136-strong list of the world's best-selling brands and it's Khortysta, which isn't even that hard )

I think it's risky to use a brand name to "take back" certain words or phrases that are commonly seen as negative. There is a liquor brand I know of named after a universally negative term for a woman, and another brand I have seen whose name is Gold Rush-era slang for a prostitute. (Yes, really). Both brands, according to their websites, want to "take back" the term or "pay homage to" those women. I genuinely wish them well - us nano-brand owners gotta stick together! - and admire their bravery, but those aren't choices I would make.

What I would suggest is a Cecil Baker approach. The Cecil Baker is a cocktail invented and named by my friend, noted bartender Naren Young, and an important part of the cocktail is telling every guest who orders it who Cecil Baker is, and making sure you never tell the same story twice. Kylie Minogue's leg waxer, Robert de Niro's pseudonym for checking in to hotels, Hugh Jackman's bum double...the only limits are your imagination. And why?

Because "Cecil Baker" sounds like someone you should have heard of.

That's something to aim for with a new brand name, what genius designer Raymond Loewy termed MAYA - Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. Loewy noticed if he gave a client a design that was 100% brand-new and innovative, the design would often be rejected. And if he designed something that wasn't very innovative, clients would reject that as well, because it wasn't different enough.

Case in point: Ford's Gin, created by a group that included my friend Simon Ford . "Ford's Gin" as a brand name sounds like it's been around forever, which is important because they wanted it to be a classic gin that just happened to have a playful side. Like pairing a tailored suit jacket with jeans and trainers, which is coincidentally what Simon usually wears.

Beware, if you work for a drinks firm, of creating a line extension in a different category. The logic is solid enough on the face of it: "Brand X does well, so let's introduce Brand X but in a different spirits category". Case in point: Tanqueray Sterling Vodka, or indeed Gordon's Vodka. These brands exist. But exist is all they do; the parent brands are so dominant in the gin category that a vodka from the same brand simply doesn't make sense. (Amaro di Angostura is a rare exception: the company famed for its non-potable Angostura Limited cocktail bitters created a potable bitter, and after some initial confusion, it's doing very well).

Or take Absolut Elyx. Launched with unbelievably huge fanfare in 2013, the brand spent $15m a year on A&P, including maintaining a celebrity party mansion in Los Angeles and chauffering celebs to the Coachella music festival in copper-painted helicopters. They threw truly epic parties (I went to a whole bunch of them) and showered expensive copper pineapple- and flamingo-shaped drinking vessels on key accounts. But the Elyx brand seems* to have recently, quietly died, after less than a decade and a rumoured $100m total investment. Sales never got much above 35, 000 9LEs in it's main market the USA, which is scandalous compared to the brands they were aiming to compete with, such as Grey Goose (4.2m 9LEs) and Ketel One (3.2m).

Why did Elyx fail? (And why did Absolut's previous attempt at a luxury line extension, Absolut Level in 2004, also fail?)

Well, more than one reason, but primarily I think it's because the label carried the name "Absolut" on it, which I suspect was the quid-pro-quo demanded by the Absolut/Pernod board of directors before they forked over all that cash. Consumers might have gone for a $35 brand simply named Elyx, but a brand named "Absolut Elyx" has to answer the question "Why does this cost $11 more than regular Absolut?"

*The most recent News on the Elyx brand's website is from 2019, their last Instagram post was almost a year ago, and no-one on LinkedIn is currently working for Elyx....

Back to good names: if you're not much of a writer - in fact, even if you are - AI such as ChatGPT can be a useful servant or writing partner, depending on how much help you need.

Check out this recent prompt:

C'mon, those names aren't bad!

And it'll generate as many options as you like:

These names, or any you generate, may not set the world on fire; they can just be jumping-off points. So jump! Whatever you come up with, it has to be better than Pantalones, right?

Right, you've now got a decent idea of what your brand is, who it's for, and what it's named.

Next week on Tuesday and Thursday, we're going into Liquid - where to get it, how to make it, and how to brief a distiller.

Let me know your thoughts and questions in the comments below!

Previous articles:

The Client Agreement - Part 1

The Client Agreement - Part 2

The Brand - Part 1

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