Last updated on September 22nd, 2017 at 11:01 pm

We’ve previously discussed ways to get the most out of your brand name. An effective brand name should be serve as an advertisement and create a positive first impression for your company. It should be easy to remember and easy for your potential customers to associate with your brand.

But there is a danger in making your brand name too simple. Seth Godin makes the point that though you want to make your brand name simple to remember, you need to avoid having it being generic. Mr. Godin notes the following as to names which use generic terms from a branding standpoint:

It’s a bad brand name because Central or Land or World are meaningless. They add absolutely no value to your story, they mean nothing and they are interchangeable. “Here honey, I bought you these cheap earrings at Diamond World!” Not only are they bland, but you can’t even remember one over the other. This is the absolute last refuge of a marketer who has absolutely nothing to say and can’t even find the guts to stand for what they do. It’s just generic.

Mr. Godin then closes his post with a challenge to find any situations where a generic termed business had succeeded. He then goes onto dismiss several examples (like Pizza Hut and Radio Shack) as being companies that succeeded despite their names. he closes with a challenge to come up with any successful brand that has succeeded with a generic term.

My response to that challenge is to point to Disneyland. I will admit that this is cheating since only one word is generic, but I do think it fits the problem presented. Though Disneyland is one word (it’s Florida counterpart, Disney World, is two words), the thought is still the same as a company called Jewelry Land. In this particular example, the generic terms Land and World ground the more esoteric term of Disney in reality. It presents the concept of an area based on the Disney theme, a literal land of Disney.

The point of this is that any term, even if it is generic can be a building block for a brand. But at the same time, you need to be sure that you are adding something unique to the equation and not just building a generic name out of generic terms.

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