The role of linguistic components of brand names in advertising efficiency

One of the most important factors in product marketing is the brand name. Success is largely dependent on the ability of the brand name to convey a positive image of the product and to raise customer awareness. The brand name is what customers encounter the most frequently in advertisements – it must be created to leave an impression in prospective buyers, to make them associate the name with certain desirable qualities peculiar to certain products. It must be distinctive in order to remain in the customers’ memory among the many other brands in the global market. This research examines how language components aid memorability and association to certain product characteristics, and whether even the smallest components of language, the sounds play a significant role in creating meaningfulness within a brand name.

Klink, R. R. (2000, February). Creating Brand Names with Meaning: The Use of Sound Symbolism. Marketing Letters, 11(1), 5-20. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40216555

Klink conducted two interrelated studies in order to detect the effect of sound symbolism on the meaningfulness of brand names. In Study 1, 31 hypotheses were tested: 13 hypotheses in front vs. back vowel sounds, 6 in stops vs. fricatives, 6 in voices vs. voiceless stops, and 6 in voices vs. voiceless fricatives – the study focused on synesthetic sound symbolism and tried to determine whether sounds in brand names are accompanied by meaning. Study 2 explored whether brand names are able to transmit information on particular products in the presence of related marketing communications.

Klink used only visual cues for his research in order to exclude natural deviations in pronunciation, avoid bias through alteration of intonation or tone, and to save time and thus enable the testing of more word-pairs. Study 1 concluded that brand names containing front vowels, fricatives, voiceless stops and voiceless fricatives generally indicated a smaller, lighter, faster, prettier and more feminine product as opposed to their counterparts. Vowels provided stronger evidence for sound symbolism than consonants. Klink notes that although the use of semantic appositeness is the most favourable practice in brand naming, sound symbolism may prove more efficient in global marketing, as the perception of sounds is relatively a general, unified phenomenon, while semantics is more dependent on a particular language, and therefore is less international.

Lowrey, T. M., Shrum, L. J., & Dubitsky, T. M. (2003). The Relation between Brand-Name Linguistic Characteristics and Brand-Name Memory. Journal of Advertising, 32(3), 7-17. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4622164

This study aims to find out whether certain linguistic factors in certain brand names foster the ability of customers to recall and recognize those brands. 480 brand names were examined in terms of 23 linguistic properties, including properties without any prior research able to show their effect on memory. Interaction between each linguistic feature and brand name familiarity, and the relation of properties to meaningfulness or distinctiveness were also taken into consideration.

The research found that 5 variables had evincible effect on brand-name memory. In case of 4 variables (unusual spellings, semantic appositeness, initial plosives, paranomasia) the connection of the variables and brand-name memory were stronger for less familiar brands. The effect of the fifth one, blending, was proved to be more powerful for more familiar brand names, however, the effect in both familiarity conditions was negative, and therefore blending inhibits the recognition of a brand name.

Tests were targeted at female consumers between the ages 18-65 in the United States. In my opinion using solely women has a restrictive effect on findings – the researchers themselves acknowledge this. Moreover, I also find that the examined age group is too broad – age determines the ability to recall certain things, and this effect could have been taken into consideration by the research group. Apart from these, they put great efforts into the research; I particularly liked the part about coding process, which was thoroughly and carefully executed. The researchers have successfully deepened earlier studies, and they have discovered the negative effect of blending on brand-name memory.

Keller, K. L., Heckler, S. E., & Houston, M. J. (1998, January). The Effects of Brand Name Suggestiveness on Advertising Recall. Journal of Marketing, 62(1), 48-57. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1251802

The study conducted by Keller et al. focuses on the suggestive ability of brand names. They examined whether inherently meaningful brands had more efficiency at initial product positioning as opposed to nonsuggestive brand names, and whether they could maintain their strong effect on customer recall even after brand repositioning. Emphasis was put on the importance of product context: a brand name might evoke different meanings when applied to different kinds of products. Two hypotheses were formed: (1) suggestive brand names have a better performance in customer recall if their advertised benefits are consistent with meaning, (2) nonsuggestive brand names reach higher recall of benefit claims that are unrelated to meaning during subsequent advertising (after brand repositioning).

The research has found that suggestive brand names are more efficient indeed in customer recall when semantic associations with certain related benefits are required. However, both suggestive and nonsuggestive brand names were perceived as equally effective cues to unrelated benefits when there had been no prior advertising. Suggestive brand names were more likely to evoke the original benefit claim after brand repositioning, which provided support for both hypotheses. Nonsuggestive brand names provided a better performance in customer recall after brand repositioning as opposed to suggestive names. The authors argue that customers either find it difficult to accept new positioning or they fail to remember new benefit claims if the brand name continues to remind them of original benefit claims – a careful research must be conducted by marketers in order to detect the backwash of brand repositioning.