Brand man: the role of communications in our survival.

We wouldn’t be here today but for our extraordinary ability to communicate. Me, you, the kids next door.  None of us.

You see you don’t have to travel back very far to the days when we (Homo Sapiens) were not in the comfort of a monopoly that we are today. We had competition at the top of the food chain. And it wasn’t just from sabre toothed tigers and woolly mammoths. There were other species of humans built much like us, doing much the same things as us, with the same needs & intentions. We were in a competitive market.
 

In the excellent 'Sapiens' Yuval Noah Harari suggests that a mere 170,000 years ago we (Sapiens) lived concurrently no fewer than three other 'Homo' species. Yet 100,000 years later only one had survived. Why?
 

Harari concludes that our dominance as a species was not due, as is commonly suggested, to superior brain size (all boasted brains of similar size). The difference between winning and losing was down to our ability to communicate.

Us Homo Sapiens used our resources (our similar sized brains) in a different way to the competition. We developed more sophisticated ways to communicate, and in so doing managed to engage, direct and mobilise people on a much larger scale than the others.

A critical element of this was our ability to use language to create stories above and beyond  "Watch out, there's a tiger behind you".  Uniquely, Sapiens created fiction, we could talk about things that we hadn’t seen, smelled or run away from. This was immensely powerful.  It was the start of myths, legends, gods and religion, which enabled us to imagine things collectively.  It was this that enabled us to co-operate flexibly in large numbers, and thus take over the world.

All this may sound a familiar pattern to brand people. At its core, branding unleashes the power of storytelling to galvanise large groups of people. Brands aren’t ‘real’: the AA, Downton Abbey and Moo.com are businesses, experiences and feelings, but you can’t touch them any more than you can touch religion, laws or limited companies. At one level, brands don’t exist.

Yet brands create imagined realities out of words and symbols, and thus offer powerful ways to engage the masses around commonly held beliefs and values.

So, the moral of this story is simple: when you don’t enjoy a relevant competitive product advantage, you best invest your time creating and communicating a story and set of beliefs (branding) that can engage and galvanise large groups of people. It’s worked for us for 170,000 years.

Be confident in naming your brand

If I got an English pound for every time a business asked me to give them a name like ‘Google’ I’d be a wealthy man.  Their thinking is usually sound – it will help them to differentiate from the crowd in their market. The trouble is, when presented with names like ‘Google’ or ‘Yahoo’ the business suddenly loses all confidence.  It seeps from them in front of my very eyes as they contemplate their new logo on their website, in a supermarket aisle or store frontage. Google-type names sound just too...different. The trouble with made-up or ‘clever’ names (that have a back story) is they tend not to trigger any familiarity bells, so they get rejected by businesses.

“It should do exactly what it says on the tin” I hear. No it shouldn’t if you are late to the market and there are already 1001 competitors already trampling on your new patch.

So they are offered names that communicate invariably generic attributes or benefits, literally and metaphorically, which of course they think are too dull. And the .com domain isn’t available. So off we head to Google-land again.

There are some great exceptions to this rule – Moonpig, Moo.com and Ocado being a few - fun and distinctive names that mean absolutely nothing, but which we can remember with relative ease. Unlike easyprint, cardsmadeeasy and other slightly dull generics.

Our Story

Mimo was created from the names of our director’s children. It also means Multiple Inputs Multiple Outputs, which describes our approach to brand development, and is therefore what we do every day to create lasting differentiation for our clients.

On discussing the subject of naming your brand on Twitter, there is a common theme emerging with these successful businesses:

Branding, Naming, Name, Creation, marketing

Branding, marketing, naming, brand name

The simpler your business name, the more impact it will have.

A great, simple, short name can create a real buzz and position you as a real competitor. You will differentiate yourself from the crowd with an aspect of mystery from the offset. Just like if someone tells you that they have a secret, you will instantly want to find out more. It is that level of power that really makes a great brand.

Your brand values are important too and remember to keep this in mind. A way to support your brand name further is to use a 'tagline' for example, Nike's 'Just Do It' and you should refer back to this tagline when presenting your brand to someone new and to the public.

Mimo Hints:

1. Like so many things in business life, the whole process should start with a written brief that both parties agree to and sign in blood.
2. Agree the success criteria and stick to them. (Ignore the CEO’s wife who doesn’t like the name because it reminds her of a family pet.)
3. Reject the existing language of the category unless you’re first or second in.
4. Acknowledge inevitable early discomfort of sharing your chosen name (like when you announced your first born was to be called Isambard)
5. Remember, a name is what you make of it.  Google, Apple, Virgin are global brands which we now think are great names, not the other way round.

If you need some advice with your branding strategy please feel free to get in contact with us at Mimo.