Despite the uncertainty of the global pandemic and recessionary outlook, M&A activity continues to surge across all industries, with a record $2.9 trillion in transactions in 2021, and 2022 is expected to be even bigger. While not every deal requires naming, the large transformation deals do. In these cases, a new name is the most visible, symbolic and longest-lasting M&A decision. It’s an opportunity to start fresh and signal unity to employees and customers alike. But shockingly, many companies still get it wrong. 

Getting to a great name in these fast-paced environments requires significant care and attention. What sometimes starts out as “let’s brainstorm and come up with something cool,” can often turn into a highly emotional, intensely subjective process that can create leadership friction and decision-making paralysis, ultimately delaying a brand’s launch.  

Following are five best practices to get M&A naming right.

1. M&A naming is not a democracy. 

Since naming a new enterprise is something many executives experience just once in their careers, many leaders don’t want to make the decision alone. So, they invite stakeholders from every angle to weigh in. However, there will likely already be numerous decision-making voices at the table—including multiple CEOs, private equity partners, other investors or board members. In these multi-stakeholder environments, we believe the decision-making body should be kept to the right balance of as few executives as possible, but as many as necessary, with focused participation early in the process (yes, even CEOs).  

Despite the perception that naming is a fun, creative exercise, the reality is that it’s a high-stakes, emotional decision that will carry your organization into the next several years, and maybe even the next several decades. With this in mind, getting lean on the decision-making team, and ensuring they’re active participants from the very beginning, will lead to a more successful outcome.   

We also recommend that clients resist the temptation to test name candidates with employees—while inclusion is a noble goal, this step gives employees a voice in the decision, rather than treating them as an audience we want to inspire with our ultimate reveal.  

2. The name you want is probably taken, but there’s a better name out there that isn’t. 

This one is a tough pill to swallow. But with most M&A deals being highly global, getting a name to clear across many trademark classes and geographies requires deep, divergent thinking. Yes, ‘Mosaic’ is taken. No, you cannot have the name ‘Fountain’. ‘Iris’ does indeed tell an intuitive metaphorical story, but four other organizations already beat you to it!  

While we wish it was easy enough to just call the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and ask for an exception, unfortunately, it’s not. But by exhausting creative exploration, you can uncover an adjacent or new idea that tells an even richer story. Sometimes that means you’ll get lucky with a simple, metaphorical real word that isn’t yet taken. Sometimes it’s about coining a gettable, “sticky” new word, and sometimes it takes getting comfortable with an idea that is more abstract—and more ownable. With an estimated 213 million companies in the world, naming isn’t just a creative game. It’s also a numbers game. And arriving at an answer that is inspired, strategic and viable requires diligence, objectivity and a willingness to push past your comfort zone. 

3. Every name has varying degrees of legal risk—but not every risk is a deal breaker.  

To add on to point #2, almost any name you consider will have some degree of risk associated. No name is ever given an ‘all clear,’ so getting legal involved early on can help you understand what degree of risk your organization is willing to take on, which will then influence the types of names explored. What’s more, different legal teams may employ different legal strategies to pursue or secure a name, from acquiring a mark to petitioning for co-usage with another party.  

When Google launched Alphabet, even an enterprise of their size and influence couldn’t clear the pure URL of alphabet.com or secure the pure ‘alphabet’ social handles, which were currently being used by other organizations with the same name, including a division of BMW. But Google believed Alphabet was the name that best represented the story they wanted to tell, so they went to market understanding there were legal risks associated with that name and launched with another URL—the very clever www.abc.xyz. All to say, legal baggage associated with your favorite names can be investigated and often worked around, as long as you have legal embedded in your process from the very beginning. 

4. Fast-paced M&A deadlines can work in favor of a successful naming outcome.  

With all the critical decision points and process gates leading to deal closings and ultimately a new brand launch, getting a name identified, cleared, designed and launched can feel like a daunting process. At Prophet, we believe sticking to an objective process and adhering to a thoughtful naming brief as the source of truth enables teams to use time pressure in a way that works in their favor. Having less time can actually be the forcing function teams need to evaluate ideas objectively, leave emotion and biases at the door and make quick, but meaningful decisions. When there is no time to second guess or decide by consensus, teams often trust their guts and arrive at impactful answers. 

5. And finally, remember that a name is a powerful asset—but not the only asset. 

Although we always say your name is your most visible asset, it is not your only asset. This is especially important in M&A environments, where there are multiple parties coming together under a shared value proposition that is oftentimes broader and more aspirational than their previous strategies or stories. While the name can certainly signal part of this new experience, it cannot tell the complete story on its own. We help clients see their name in the context of other strategic levers, like the promise they make to their customers, their visual language, or the experiences they aim to create.  

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With rising customer expectations, companies across industries are investing in innovative experiences, digital marketing capabilities, and organizational change to attract and retain talent. But with fast-moving timelines and competing demands, they can’t always invest in storytelling, a key component in influencing and driving change.

Verbal branding—or the strategic deployment of language through tools like voice, messaging, content strategy and copy—plays a key role in optimizing the return on these investments, ensuring companies make thoughtful choices about their communications in these high-impact moments.

In this article, we offer three imperatives for organizations to consider when using their verbal branding to differentiate, deliver their promise, and win in the market.

Meet Customers’ Expectations for Personalized, Connected Communications

More and more, customers expect a consistent experience across channels – from mentioning a brand on Twitter to calling customer service. They expect their interactions to be seamless, with one channel easily picking up a conversation started in another (for example, starting in a chatbot and following up by phone—these two interactions use different systems but are ideally connected by a centralized customer data platform to create a unified customer picture). In short, customers want brands to recognize them as the same person across different channels and interactions.

While these channels and interactions have different formats, functions and requirements, they need to feel creatively and strategically cohesive. The implication for brands is ensuring that all these channels—whether automated or human-enabled—are on-voice and on-message.

But cohesive doesn’t necessarily mean uniform. The best service interactions modulate based on user sentiment. They can sense excitement, frustration, confusion, and adapt as needed. This can be achieved through both human and digital capability.

For example, it can be as simple as empowering call center reps with cues on how to identify customer archetypes based on emotion and providing discrete service journeys and scripts for them. This is particularly important for industries that customers approach with sensitivity or trepidation, such as financial services or healthcare.

“Verbal branding plays a key role in optimizing the return on these investments, ensuring companies make thoughtful choices about their communications in these high-impact moments.”

At the same time, brands using natural language processing tools, such as in-chatbot experiences, can similarly “train” their Natural Language Processing (NLP) tool to not only identify the customer’s desired “job to be done,” but to detect underlying emotion and adapt responses accordingly. For example, a chatbot that can sense a customer’s frustration about a delayed order, offer sympathy and quickly route them to live chat support, can help repair the customer’s brand perception in a tenuous moment.

Invest in Innovation—and its Expression

While many companies prioritize investing in new products and experiences, sometimes they don’t consider the importance of the words used to guide their audiences through them.

Rather than viewing product and expression as separate steps in the process, they should be developed in tandem as complementary assets, working together to shape how customers interact with and perceive the brand. Effective verbal expression (in this case, UX writing) bridges the gap between the layout and usability of the product.

Regardless of how brilliantly developed the product is, without clear and engaging written cues, the audience (customers or employees) may struggle to use or navigate it. More broadly, however, approaching innovation solely through a product lens misses an opportunity to embody the brand’s verbal identity. Effective copy can help a brand make a human connection with users that’s often not possible through design alone.

Brands should develop on-voice UX writing that has clear user goals in mind and reflects the likely emotional mindset of customers at various stages of their journey. Using this approach, copy can help drive self-progression or clarify complex topics in an engaging, on-brand manner—without disrupting the experience.

Brands that harness the strategic prowess of UX writing will excel at forming closer bonds with customers over brands who merely prioritize function in their innovations.

Use Storytelling to Galvanize Employees Around a Shared Vision, Meet Mandates and Drive Retention

The “Big Quit” is upon us. In an increasingly competitive talent market following a year that has upended what work looks like, employee expectations are rapidly changing. To meet this upheaval, impactful verbal expression can play a vital role in shaping experiences that respond to employee needs and catapult desired organizational change.

From crafting a meaningful shared vision to galvanizing employee sentiment, retaining key talent and attracting prospective candidates, transformational organization change requires a comprehensive accompanying voice and messaging strategy.

For example, how might we excite employees about new innovations? Inspire employees to care about new internal initiatives? Bring new hires into the corporate culture and values? Present a compelling case for change?

Like customers, employees are not a monolith. Different customer segments have different needs and respond to different ways of messaging. Companies with robust customer segmentation strategies can take the same approach with their employees, creating targeted messaging to meet specific employee audience group needs.

Taking a strategic messaging approach allows brands to connect external brand ambition to internal employee communication and experience, ultimately aligning the organization behind shared ambition, values, and purpose.

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Within moments of Facebook’s announcement that it’s renaming itself Meta, the world swiftly reacted. The Twittersphere sniped the loudest, pointing out that the new name won’t change any of the company’s problems: It’s still one of the most controversial companies and in the crosshairs of regulators all over the world.

So, is rebranding a mistake? Far from it. As branding experts, we think it’s a smart, strategic decision. Meta is a bold new brand, one with ambitions far broader than its current social-media properties. And it makes it the first company to stake a claim in the much-coveted metaverse, something so large and nebulous that even many tech people still can’t define it.

The name certainly has its strengths. It’s short, simple, and clearly grounded in the frame of reference the business intends to exist within — and redefine. With only a day of storytelling behind it, we’re curious if there’s more to the Meta-metaphor beyond the metaverse. Is it a wink to the alternate reality that’s created through all social media? Is it a self-deprecating nod to Facebook’s size and scale? Is it a reference to the expression of irony or self-parody of “that’s so meta?

“Meta is a bold new brand, one with ambitions far broader than its current social-media properties.”

It’s a branding direction that makes a great deal of sense for tech companies, especially in clarifying their story for investors. (And it’s not surprising that Facebook shares rose following the announcement.) Just as Alphabet made it possible for the company to grow beyond Google, this new name will pave the way for Meta to broaden its brand portfolio.

We expect that Facebook will still be Facebook to its users. So will Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. Each of those brands can–and should–have narrower definitions and fulfill every expectation users and customers have for them.

But other parts of the company will be rebranded. Oculus, its VR division, will become Meta.  And Facebook Portal, its smart display products, will become Meta Portal.

As Meta, the parent company becomes more expansive and is well-positioned to move into the future. And the new name comes just days after the company announced it would invest $10 billion in developing the metaverse, moving in directions far beyond its social-media roots.

“In the metaverse, you’ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine— get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the announcement. That includes “completely new experiences that don’t really fit how we think about computers or phones today.”

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Foreword

The evolving COVID-19 pandemic has thrust us all into a new, urgent reality, one that—perhaps permanently—is challenging assumptions about how we live and work. From a business perspective, the pandemic is rapidly exposing the vulnerabilities in our strategies, systems and processes, and accelerating our reliance on digital systems that scale and connect where people cannot.

In this context, digital assistants such as chatbots and voice agents have a valuable role to play. They can support business resilience and reduced operational expenses, freeing up service and support representatives to focus on higher urgency, more sophisticated customer interactions; deliver needed information and services; become a source of “voice-of-the-customer” insight; or provide a moment of humanity and helpfulness when customers need it most.

The report that follows lays out strategic and brand guidelines for designing and activating digital assistants. We hope you find it valuable as you navigate this challenging time.

Susan Etlinger & Darcy Muñoz
April 8, 2020

Executive Summary

Digital assistants — whether embodied in a voice agent, a chatbot, or a combination — change the way we think about brand, from a generally static and visual experience to one that is dynamic and conversational. They unlock new strategic possibilities for customer and ecosystem engagement, and, as a result, raise questions about how brands should sound and behave in dynamic, often unpredictable situations. Finally, they compel us to address questions of brand architecture, identity, behaviors, language choices, movement, and tone in an unprecedented way.

This report, based both on independent research and direct consulting experience with global brands, addresses the opportunities of digital assistants and the conversational technologies that make them possible. We focus on conversational brand strategy, the key elements of persona development, and how to build engaging and trustworthy conversational experiences. Finally, we include a checklist to help business leaders plan for the risks and opportunities of incorporating conversational technologies into a well-considered brand strategy.

This report includes the following:

• How to build a conversational brand that supports business strategy
• Key elements of a conversational brand identity
• Fundamentals of a trustworthy conversational experience
• A checklist & assessment to guide planning efforts and gauge progress

Is your organization well-positioned to deliver strategic, on-brand and trustworthy customer experiences using digital assistants?

Take our assessment to find out.

Download the full report below.

In today’s digital, always-on world, words are an increasingly powerful currency for brands to create real-time value and demonstrate relevance.

But finding the right words—and using them effectively—requires rigor and structure. Deploying a thoughtful verbal branding strategy (sometimes called a verbal identity) can help bridge your brand strategy to in-market execution through content, communications and experiences.

From finding the right voice, to building equity in key messages, to creating a methodical approach to portfolio naming, a clear verbal strategy can empower writers, marketers and sales teams with centralized ways to create cohesive, connected communications. Which, when done right, have the power to influence opinion, shift perceptions and ultimately help drive business growth.

Defining Your Verbal Branding Strategy

Strategic Naming

Simply put, names are one of the quickest ways for brands to tell their stories. A great name provides a glimpse into what a brand stands for and gives audiences a preview of the experience to come. And while good names can come from anywhere, the best ones are just as strategic as they are creative. Taking an art and science approach to naming ensures names not only signal a compelling story but also connect back to their strategy.

Before ideating names, it’s important to get strategically grounded by thinking through questions like:

• What should my new name communicate about my business or product?
• What should it signal for the future?
• How will my audiences interact with the name? And where?
• How can I avoid naming trends to create an enduring, evergreen name?
• How can my name help me stand out in my category?

And because naming is inherently an emotional, subjective process, it’s key to align on these questions at the outset with all relevant stakeholders and decision-makers and bring them along for what will surely be an iterative process.

Nomenclature

But while most organizations aren’t naming or re-naming their company or hero product every day, almost all organizations are tasked with managing product, service or feature naming.

This is particularly true in today’s world of mergers, acquisitions and rapid innovation, where portfolios across categories have become complex and inconsistent, ultimately creating a confusing customer experience.

Nomenclature, also known as Naming Systems or Naming Architecture, allows brands to create order and hierarchy across their portfolios to provide internal clarity around offerings and how they work together as a whole. This creates a more simplified way for customers to better navigate a brand’s breadth of offerings, ultimately driving choice.

At Prophet, we take a considered, strategic approach to nomenclature that ensures existing portfolio names are optimized and streamlined, while also providing clear systems and constructs for creating new names. This creates efficiencies in naming and managing names internally while providing a system for growing and evolving portfolio names in the future.

Brand Voice

Just like people, brands also have unique personalities, styles and quirks that define their behaviors and relationships. Brand voice is the art of conveying that personality through how its people write and speak.

By using a distinct voice consistently across touchpoints, brands are able to make connections, strengthen relationships and build loyalty and affinity over time. Brand voice can also help you stand out and grab attention in a crowded or commoditized category. But creating a voice isn’t just a creative exercise—it’s also a strategic one. To be truly successful, your voice should be rooted in your brand strategy and organizational DNA, optimized for your industry, and reflective of your customers’ needs and attitudes.

“A clear verbal strategy can empower writers, marketers and sales teams with centralized ways to create cohesive, connected communications.”

But while your voice is a hardworking asset, simplicity and utility are key to successful execution. We recommend avoiding “attribute soup” and boiling your voice down to just 2-3 core components. If you were tasked with writing, say, a piece that must be Trusted, Friendly, Insightful, Bold, and Engaging—would you know where to start? Instead, try to identify the main hallmarks of your voice, and distill them into a persona and 2-3 directive principles that give your writers a clearer understanding of what “right” sounds like.

Messaging

Now, onto messaging. First things first, messaging themes aren’t copy—they guide copy. As high-level communications points, they can be dialed up and down across communications and adapted for different audiences—ensuring a flexible, cohesive expression, rather than a static, repetitive one.

Because messaging should help convey your strategy, your positioning or value proposition should be your starting point for developing your messages. If you don’t have that in place, you can still derive messages by thinking about the intersection between what your brand wants to say, and what your audience wants to hear—leaving room for how you’ll grow and evolve in the near future.

By prioritizing those ideas down to a focused set, you can bolster them with proof points, keywords or phrases that help writers and marketers bring them to life.

It can be easy to see how voice and messaging come to life in high-impact touchpoints like advertising or your website, but it’s equally, if not more important, to use these tools in more functional touchpoints, like customer service call center scripts and chatbots, so that on-strategy voice and messaging becomes an integral part of the entire customer experience.

Finally, don’t forget employee touchpoints. A compelling approach to voice and messaging can go a long way towards shaping internal communications and experiences that keep employees feeling engaged, informed, and inspired to live the brand more fully.

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“Better than a thousand tastes.” “Anything can be happy.” “Sparrow’s nest coffee.”

Are these phrases, taglines, slogans, or riddles? Actually, they’re none of the above, but rather, the translated Chinese names of three brands you probably know: Subway, Pepsi and Nestle, respectively.

Choosing a name can make or break any brand experience. And as organizations look to expand globally, considering how your name comes to life in new markets—what it means, how it’s pronounced, and what it evokes—is key to connecting with new audiences around the world.

Chinese Brand Names

The Chinese language is character based, and because each character has its own meaning, every brand name can be interpreted as the sum of its parts. What’s more, some characters can have the same pronunciation but a drastically different meaning. Characters that are positive or neutral on their own can become negative when combined. Which means an elegant English or coined name can, if you’re not careful, become impossible to pronounce, confusing or even offensive to native Chinese speakers.

This is why most organizations pair their global name with a Chinese name that replicates its pronunciation to help Chinese consumers say and understand it.

And while a luxury brand may see Chinese consumers fight through pronunciation challenges to use its global name as a sign of a premium product or experience, more middle market brands risk rejection by not adapting their name for this market.

Thinking about translating your brand name into Chinese can feel overwhelming and complicated. At Prophet, with offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai, and the thought leadership of Tom Doctoroff, Chief Cultural Insights Officer and one of the world’s foremost experts on Chinese consumer behavior, we understand the dynamics at play when bringing names to China.

5 Tips When Localizing Your Brand Name in China

We’ve pulled together five tips to help organizations create a successful name and demonstrate relevance to Chinese consumers.

1.  Set the Stage – Identify Your Primary Dialect

You probably know that the Chinese language is highly complex, and perhaps better defined as a group of related languages, rather than one universal language.

Used in mainland China and Taiwan, Mandarin is the official language of China and overall, spoken by the most people, while Cantonese is spoken in Hong Kong and the Guangdong province. And while Mandarin and Cantonese share a written system of characters, how a character is pronounced comes down to where in China you are, and what dialect you are using.

Keep in mind, these are just two of the most popular dialects, but there are seven traditionally classified dialect groups, and hundreds of subgroups. But global brands usually focus on connecting with the largest population of consumers, which typically means accommodating Mandarin speakers first. However, conducting linguistic disaster checks are critical to ensure that a perfectly innocent name in Mandarin doesn’t invite ridicule in Cantonese—or any other prevalent dialects in your target market.

You might be wondering—how do I engage with Mandarin or Cantonese without being able to read the language? For English speakers, we often see a Romanized version of Chinese using pinyin, which is the official way to spell and pronounce Chinese characters using the English alphabet. But these sounds can have radically different meanings depending on which characters are being used. Take, for example, ‘yōu’ – characters you can use for this pinyin include: 优 (excellent); 悠 (tradition); or 佑 (bless).

2. Consider Your Options – What Type of Name Does Your Brand Require?

With thousands of Chinese characters, many with multiple meanings, adapting your name for China is a tricky business. There are two main factors to consider here; the phonetic link to your global name (how much they sound alike), and your evocative link (how much the Chinese name conveys the story of the original name). Some brands prioritize one of the other, but many do both.

Strong Phonetic / Weak Evocative Link

A strong phonetic/weak evocative link replicates the sound of the English name using Chinese characters as closely as possible, without mimicking the literal meaning. Adidas, or 阿迪达斯 in Chinese characters, and Ādídásī in pinyin, is a strictly phonetic transliteration. This strategy makes sense for the sportswear company, since it’s a namesake brand (after founder Adolf Dassler), and carries significant equity. While the literal translation doesn’t have a meaningful definition, it is recognizable and consistent with the global brand.

Weak Phonetic / Strong Evocative Link

In some cases, phonetic similarity may not be as important to the brand. For example, Marriott, 万豪 or wàn háo, does not sound the same as its English name, but can be translated to “million” and “grand,” evoking a feeling of luxury and style that reflects its global brand equities.

Strong Phonetic / Strong Evocative Link

Many believe that a best-in-class name brings both a phonetic similarity and strong evocative meaning to bear. Coca-Cola is frequently brought up as the gold standard, and for good reason. Before standardizing their Chinese name, Coca-Cola was transliterated at the local level by shop owners in many ways, having a different literal meaning from one shop to the next (“bite the wax tadpole” is the most infamous). In 1928, Coca-Cola trademarked their official Chinese name, 可口可樂 or kě kǒu kě lè, which can be translated as “makes mouths happy” or sometimes “yummy” and “joy”. They now have a close aural approximation, and one that lends a positive association.

3. What Do You Want Your Name to Say About Your Brand?

While the English name of a brand lends international credibility, “Your Chinese name can be an opportunity to create thematic resonance,” Doctoroff says. “The need to elevate the proposition through the brand name is important both for memorability’s sake, but also to give a sense of what the role of the brand in the consumer’s life is.”

For this reason, many businesses choose to transliterate their names to be aspirational articulations of the brand’s higher purpose and its reason for being, rather than a direct translation of the goods or services. Transliterations often rely on images and metaphors, as well as benefit-oriented language, around benefits like “happiness” and “prosperity”.

For example, take the shampoo brand, Head & Shoulders, which becomes 海飞丝(hǎi fēi sī), translating to “flying silk of the sea.”

The exception? Those iconic brands who not only own a word, but an image. Apple is translated directly to 苹果, (píngguŏ). “Because of its iconic stature, the pervasive use of the apple in its visual iconography, and the fact that ‘apple’ is a real word name, it makes sense for it to be translated, rather than transliterated,” says Doctoroff.

4. Recognize that Your Name Can’t Communicate Everything

It may be tempting to load your Chinese name with many characters to augment your brand’s storytelling. It’s an issue we struggle with in English naming—why can’t my name convey everything about my business or offer? But just as they are in English, considerations like succinctness, memorability and ease of pronunciation are still key in Chinese. Consider the simplicity of BMW, 宝马 (bǎo mǎ), which literally means “precious horse”. It’s meaningful—
and not overly complicated.

As ever, a name is one part of your brand’s overall strategy. When LinkedIn officially entered China with a new Chinese name, 领英 (lǐng yīng), meaning “leadership” and “elite”, they focused on a series of localization moves through press releases, partner endorsements and China-specific offerings. This allowed them to communicate the name change, while activating their value proposition and demonstrating their commitment to the Chinese market.

5. Consider Your Own Brand

One name you may not have considered translating? Your own. While it is common for professionals that frequently conduct business in China to create phonetic adaptations of their names to help Chinese colleagues pronounce them, you can also take this opportunity to create a memorable name that communicates something about your personal brand.

Doctoroff, for example, is known exclusively in China as 唐锐涛 or Tang Rui Tao. The first character points to the Tang Dynasty, the second means ‘sharp’ and the third, ‘a big wave’. Through his name, Tom signals his respect for Chinese language and culture, and conveys his own value proposition to his colleagues and partners.

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Whether it’s defining their voice, shaping their messages or creating a more adaptive content strategy, many brands recognize that a strong verbal branding strategy has a tangible impact in the market—helping them show up with a consistent, differentiating presence across social, digital marketing, product interfaces, and whatever comes next.

But unlike other branding tools, like a new logo, visual identity or product name, verbal branding strategies can too often wind up replaced or simply forgotten. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the insight was or how powerful the strategy is—if it isn’t being used, it can’t make an impact.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

3 Ways to Activate Your Verbal Branding Strategy

By managing and planning the launch of your verbal branding strategy, you can truly put it to work for your business. Here are three ways to ensure your verbal branding strategy makes an impact in the real world.

1. Make it real with training

Any change in how a brand operates requires education in order for it to be fully adopted, and verbal branding is no exception. Training teams need to understand a verbal strategy. This is a crucial step that is often overlooked—perhaps due to the daunting task of simply getting entire teams of marketers in the same room for several hours.

But in order for marketers and writers to be able to deliver against the new strategy consistently and confidently, they need to do more than read your guidelines; they need to learn the ideas within them. Consider learning your voice and messaging like learning a second language—proficiency takes practice.

At Prophet, we believe that the best trainings are in-person and high-touch. When we train communication teams, we pair educational content with interactive exercises, break-out activities, and group writing and editing. And don’t forget the fun—playful ice breakers, prizes, snacks and breaks are a great way to keep people engaged. Trainings are most successful when people are comfortable opening up, trying new things, asking questions, and challenging thinking—both their own and that of their peers.

2. Make it easy to engage with

With a little practice, your teams can become fluent in the new verbal branding strategy. But just like speaking a second language, people need to engage overtime to keep their skills sharp. To drive engagement, we have two principles. First, share content frequently and consistently. And second, make it easy to access.

Digital technology can provide a central reservoir to house your content and engage your teams. With something as simple as an intranet hub, you can “push” updates to your strategy, replace old files and fix “bugs” or tactics that proved to be ineffective—all while alerting teams to what’s been added or changed. It’s not unlike how software companies deliver updates to your smartphone.

“It doesn’t matter how brilliant the insight was or how powerful the strategy is—if it isn’t being used, it can’t make an impact.”

To optimize engagement, it’s important to keep updates frequent and at regular intervals, planning out your internal employee engagement the way you plan your content calendar. Maybe you begin every quarter by highlighting best-in-class pieces from different teams or sharing an interview with a lead content creator. Or you could publish a new version of your guidelines every twelve months, with new proof points, examples and updates. Your timing will likely depend on your resources, but whatever you do, make it consistent. And remember to communicate before, during and after you share updates to ensure teams know what’s available to them.

Finally, just like brands across categories are learning, a great way to drive engagement is to gamify it. Rewarding employees for answering questions correctly, commenting or evaluating others’ pieces, or engaging overall is an easy way to keep your teams coming back for more.

3. Make it global

In today’s world, growing your business increasingly means entering and strengthening your presence in global markets. And with increasingly global commerce and consumers, it’s more important than ever to deliver a cohesive, consistent brand in every market.

But while your visual identity can’t get lost in translation, your verbal branding strategy can. If you’re in the U.S. and considering entering China, Latin America or even the United Kingdom, you need to consider the cultural and linguistic nuances unique to each market. Increasingly brands are moving towards more casual, colloquial expressions—but is that the right tonality in Asia where communications tend to be more formal? In the U.S., directly addressing customers may sound simple, but what does that mean in Spanish-speaking countries that have two different versions of “you”?

The answer is not translation, but transcreation, or adaptation of strategies to work in local markets. At Prophet, when we transcreate verbal branding strategies, it’s not about creating translated, identical tools in each market, but rather, upholding the objective of the original work while reflecting the cultural and linguistic nuances of the language(s) spoken in the new markets. This might mean re-articulating, re-interpreting or re-prioritizing core ideas and tactics.

But equally as important as the process you follow are the people you partner with. True transcreation can only be done with in-market, native speakers that also have a deep understanding of the business and verbal strategy.

In transcreating your verbal strategies, your voice and messages will sound very different in English, Korean or Russian—but the relationship you build with customers through your communications will be the same.

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When you hear the word “tagline” what comes to mind?

Perhaps “Where’s the beef?” “I’m loving it,” “Think different,” or “Just Do It.” These are unforgettable, timeless classics. But most of the taglines people remember are just that—classic and old. Where are the new classics?

Lately, taglines have fallen out of favor, and much has been written questioning their value. In this article, we’ll explain what’s really going on with taglines and why they still might matter for your business.

Where Did Taglines Go?

In the past, considerable focus was placed on taglines. They were often evaluated and scrutinized with the same rigor and energy we now reserve for new product launches and acquisitions.

Today, taglines are less critical. The power and effectiveness of advertising-centric marketing have been replaced by more personal brand engagement. In many cases, customers are simply not influenced by a short, static statement attached to a logo or used as a sign-off in an ad. Instead, customers are motivated by compelling, timely offers and intuitive experiences that demonstrate a brand’s relevance to their lives.

Considering the cost of taglines

Tactically, taglines can create layers of complexity and cost. They need to be locked up with logos and translated for different markets—all while fitting into the hierarchy, both strategic and visual, with headlines and product messaging, creating significant work for brand managers.

Despite these changes and challenges, a tagline can still deliver unique value. A compelling verbal shorthand can convey the same meaning as a 60-second advertisement or a six-paragraph About Us section, capturing attention and moving audiences to a specific thought or action. In short, there is still undeniable magic to getting the words just right.

Four Purposes a Brand Tagline Can Accomplish

With this perspective, we’ve identified four scenarios when an organization should consider using a tagline—either introducing one or changing an existing line—and the questions they should answer along the way.

1. To showcase your reason for being

More and more, employees want to work for an organization with a strong sense of purpose and a values system that reflects their own. Meanwhile, customers are increasingly interested in understanding the character, purpose, culture and business practices of the organization behind the brand.

A tagline can be an effective tool to speak directly to an organization’s employees and speak to the world on employees’ behalf.

In this way, a tagline reveals a deeper insight about the company, its people, how they work and what they value. Siemen’s “Ingenuity for Life” and TransUnion’s “Information for Good” are examples of this type of tagline at work. They don’t necessarily describe the organization’s value proposition, but rather seek to tell a more emotional story about who the company is and why it matters in the world.

Questions to consider:

• Do you need to inspire and re-energize your people and teams around a core idea?
• Do you believe that customers do not fully understand your purpose?
• Can you create greater value by engaging stakeholders (employees, investors, customers, influencers, communities) in a shared purpose?

2. To reposition your company

A brand tagline can effectively help organizations reframe what customers believe about them and enhance their overall value proposition. For GE, “Imagination at work,” helped to elevate the brand’s innovation profile and created a sense of whimsical curiosity, which was echoed in advertising. For McDonald’s, “I’m lovin’ it” shifted the fast-food chain’s story from convenience to enjoyment, and paved the way for the more ingredient-focused stories that followed.

It’s important to be substantive when repositioning. As these examples illustrate, successful taglines must be part of a larger marketing or branding investment. Cosmetic communication, which includes taglines, can frustrate or alienate customers if real change is not evident in the brand’s experiences.

Questions to consider:

• Do you need to reshape perceptions of your brand?
• Are you struggling to clarify how you are different from competitors?
• Are you finding customers are uninformed about your full value proposition?

3. To create a whole new category:

In the start-up world where organizations are creating entirely new value propositions and business models, a tagline can help the brand introduce itself clearly and effectively.

In 1998, eBay introduced the descriptive tagline “Your personal trading community.” In 2001, it was replaced with the more aspirational “The world’s online marketplace,” and in 2007, it was replaced again with the much more suggestive “Shop victoriously.” Over time, eBay no longer needed to educate the market and could instead focus on making an emotional connection.

“Customers are motivated by compelling, timely offers and intuitive experiences that demonstrate a brand’s relevance to their lives.”

Brands still deploy this tact today. Dollar Shave Club’s “Shave time. Shave money” not only articulates the brand’s core value proposition, but also hints at the brand’s sense of humor in a “more blades is better” market.

Tactically, these kinds of taglines work well at launch, and as eBay illustrates, they can be used more sparingly or replaced when market education is no longer needed.

Questions to consider:

• Are you introducing a new service or business model that might need additional explanation or context?
• Do you have limited resources for articulating what you offer to customers, where a tagline that travels with the name would do heavy lifting?

4. To stand out and inspire loyalty:

In markets with high levels of competition, price-conscious customers and intense marketing activity such as telecom, automotive, food and beverage and CPG taglines can support awareness, memorability and recall.

In these cases, brands use taglines to cut through dense communication environments and create a more emotional, memorable connection. Examples of this approach are BMW’s “Freude am Fahren” or “The ultimate driving machine,” Carlsberg’s “That calls for a Carlsberg,” and Nike’s “Just Do It.”

These taglines do little work to articulate the brand’s value proposition or core differentiators. Instead, they appeal to consumers’ emotional nature to drive loyalty to the brand.

Questions to consider:

• Do customers make decisions about your products in a high-volume communications environment?
• Is your category fast-moving, with apparent parity among competitive products?
• Do you rely on broadcast marketing and advertising as a major tool for connecting with customers?

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Personalization is becoming increasingly prevalent in categories from shoes to cars to phones. But while appealing, this inundation of choice can overwhelm consumers rather than satisfy their needs.

How can a brand provide the variety of options consumers crave and fulfill the desire for a simple customer experience? The answer lies, in part, in naming. The most successful companies drive relevance and growth in their portfolios by naming – organizing and communicating offerings in a way that prioritizes what customers want and need in each purchase decision.

When done right, naming at the product, version or feature level can simplify and guide prospective shoppers to the relevant offerings for their needs. But when done poorly, it can frustrate customers—and even inhibit them from making a purchase at all.

The 3 Commandments of Brand Naming

1. Consider the customer journey: Brands need to think about the entire customer journey, how (and when) a customer makes decisions, and how to nurture customer loyalty.

2. Ask what requires a name: Not every product, service or feature needs a name. Be selective about what truly requires a name.

3. Keep the DNA of the brand front and center: The personality of a brand should be reflected in each brand name. Use it to gut-check and filter naming decisions. And then name accordingly.

3 Brand Naming Strategies Driving Growth

Looking across categories, we’ve identified three successful brand name strategies to help customers better understand your products and support business growth.

1. Consider the Customer Journey: Jawbone Focuses on What’s Important

One of the most confusing and challenging naming conventions is tiering, or differentiating similar offerings within a portfolio by their power, capabilities, etc. The challenges companies face with tiering are many. Three of the most difficult are clearly differentiating between offerings, creating a tiering convention that allows the product line to expand into the future and avoiding making the lowest tier sound undesirable.

A strong tiering example comes from the consumer tech and wearables company, Jawbone. They’ve extended the simplicity of their product design to their naming convention and product architecture, choosing to quietly discontinue their line of Bluetooth speakers to focus more fully on fitness trackers.

Jawbone has four models on the market: Upmove (which is, after all, the essence of fitness – getting up and moving), UP2, UP3 and UP4. Each successive model builds on the functionality of the previous one, making the tiers a simple incline in value, rather than random sets of features customers need to understand.

With such simple product tiering and feature names, Jawbone has the freedom to be creative with color and material naming (which are paired together within the product tiers), providing customers with exciting choices like Ruby Cross and Black Gold Twist. In doing so, Jawbone simplifies the most important functional decisions (what to buy, what you need) and lets customers have fun with the more playful—and secondary—decisions.

2. Ask What Truly Requires a Name: Tesla Builds Meaning Into Naming Conventions

Many technological advancements have opaque names with little explanation as to what they mean (i.e. Star Wars’ C-3PO). Sometimes they’re SKU numbers, sometimes they’re abbreviations and sometimes they stand for the developer’s children’s initials. Whatever they are, they’re rarely understood and have a high likelihood of creating confusion for customers navigating between nuances. (“What’s the difference between the X1300A and the X1301B?”).

“When done right, naming at the product, version or feature level can simplify and guide prospective shoppers to the relevant offerings for their needs.”

In contrast, Tesla’s naming conventions are incredibly simple. Known for its commitment to innovation, Tesla consistently defies expectations, even going so far as to publish a high-level roadmap in the form of its “Master Plan.” Tesla’s Model S P90D has all the bells and whistles, including an impressive and seemingly opaque acronym. But each component has a clear meaning: P denotes that it’s a performance model, 90 is the battery capacity in kilowatt hours and D means that the car has a dual motor. This is complemented with highly descriptive feature naming: Cabin Overheat Protection, Autopark and the famous Autopilot, and each is named for exactly what it does. Of course, this approach is supported by an extremely focused product portfolio. Tesla sells three automobile models, while many of its peers’ offerings are in the dozens.

3. Keep the DNA of the Brand: IKEA Aligns Product Names to Scandinavian Roots

Unlike Tesla, IKEA has a vast portfolio; the company sells roughly 9,500 products and introduces 2,500 new items per year. Its stores, despite their homey vibe and intuitive layouts, can be overwhelming even to the best-prepared shoppers.

To help IKEA put a strategy in place to guide the creation of all names, which started with its founder, Ingvar Kamprad. Kamprad is dyslexic, making it much more difficult to use the traditional method of long SKU numbers. Instead, IKEA assigned a type of name for each of its product types. True to the company’s heritage, the system is Scandinavia-centric: beds, wardrobes and hallway furniture are named for places in Norway, dining tables and chairs are places in Finland, and upholstered furniture and coffee tables are places in Sweden. Because each type of name can apply to multiple items (for example, Nellie’s apartment features a Hemnes bed, dresser and hall bench), IKEA creates clear signposts that help customers shop the store more comprehensively and connect the dots across their pieces.

While this strategy is less intuitive for non-Scandinavian shoppers, it is inarguably memorable, and makes customers loyal not only to IKEA, but to Malm, Kivik, and of course, Hemnes.

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