Whether it is your portfolio of products, services or solutions, most marketing executives and branding professionals are well acquainted with the concept of brand architecture. They may be less familiar, however, with the related concept of naming architecture. While the two approaches are similar, there are significant differences in both purpose and process.
At its core, a naming system or naming architecture is created to simplify navigation of a suite of products, services or solutions, usually created via clear and concise names. It is important to create names that have SEO considerations in them from both a long tail and short tail perspective. In practice, a smart scalable naming systems enables a company or organization to guide the naming of its capabilities and offerings so that customers can readily understand what is being offered. You want these names to be accessible in the following three core components:
- Accessible to customers
- Accessible to search engine spiders
- Accessible in all markets you hope to target
Organizations most frequently need to develop a naming architecture or naming system when they are a startup or newly formed division or have merged with another organization and need to clearly present a new or combined set of products, solutions, capabilities and offerings. It is also required when an existing portfolio has become so inconsistent or burdened with proprietary names that it is too complex to comprehend or navigate.
A good naming hierarchy is useful when organizations can create a new offering and the naming of it is swift, painless, and builds on top of the naming system of its current offerings in market.
While developing a naming architecture may involve creating new names, it’s actually more critical to focus on creating consistent naming criteria, hierarchies, and constructs. In fact, this process often results in streamlining the number of proprietary names in a portfolio.
Here are four critical steps to creating and/or simplifying a naming system or naming architecture:
Model Your Portfolio
Analyze your current product suite as a starting point for understanding the naming challenges being faced and identifying opportunities for simplifying things.
No two companies are exactly alike, and no single architecture model fits all. This auditing process provides the framework for restructuring the portfolio and determining where different types of names fit.
For example, when WellNet needed to simplify their complex and evolving portfolio we helped them develop a framework by first organizing offerings into four broad categories: Health, Engage, Prescribe, and Advise. This enabled WellNet to offer a clear, comprehensive integrated solution to the market to achieve their growth goals.
Define Criteria For Naming
After analyzing the current suite of names, the next step is to determine the criteria for selecting the right types of names. When are generic or descriptive names most effective? When are suggestive names — names that evoke an offering’s purpose or benefits — more appropriate? When should you consider using arbitrary or made up names instead, given that these, while distinctive, are less meaningful?
For example, Inspirata. When entrepreneur Satish Sanan (who sold his previous enterprises for close to $1Billion) needed a branding firm to bring his new cancer diagnostics venture to market, he turned to Bluetext. Working with his extended management team, Bluetext created the name, messaging, brand, logo, visual identity, responsive website, family of videos, and process infographic to most effectively share with their target audience the impact of their solution. The name Inspirata was rooted in two key words. Inspired Data. Part of Satish’s vision was to inspire the medical industry of what’s possible when we curate, manage, and analyze big data using advanced technologies and methodologies. For Inspirata, SEO was not a focus out of the gate. Their business focuses on executive relationships with the world’s leading cancer centers. Capturing business opportunities through Google and other search engines was not a KPI thus he wanted a name that engaged and inspired their customers / partners as they build out their full vision.
Naming Frameworks
Once the naming system criteria have been determined, the next step is to rationalize how the names will fit together within the suite of products. This step has two parts. First, one needs to determine the overall structure and hierarchy of names. Next, one needs to create consistent naming constructs. Here you consider the individual parts of a name. Typically, a naming construct will include a masterbrand, a specific product name (based on the naming selection criteria), and a descriptor. It may also, in certain cases, include a modifier that indicates the audience or specific area of solution for this offering.
For example, for our client Sourcefire you will see how we helped drive a smart scalable system for their products naming them as firePOWER, fireSIGHT, fireAMP, and fireCLOUD. This product naming system replaced naming from acquired brands like Clam AV, Snort, and Razorback.
Internal governance
With all of these systems in place, it is critical to ensure the naming architecture will endure the test of time. This is accomplished by developing internal governance procedures, future naming frameworks, style guidelines, and other tools to aid decision-making and compliance. You want to make sure that moving forward, everyone involved follows the same process and guidelines when it comes to naming.
At the end of the day, the key goal is accessibility, clarity and consistency. By developing an effective and enduring naming architecture, a product portfolio becomes more understandable for customers, while reducing the cost and complexity of creating and managing names as a unique process each time.
Have a naming challenge, we would love to chat with you about it. Contact us.
Earlier this year we began working with the developer of a product called NetWatcher which is designed to provide SMBs the same level of IT security as usually afforded only by large enterprises.
Last week we launched the company at the MSP World Conference in Las Vegas where our team was onsite to support the company with a great booth where we were able to demo the product to over 100 Managed Service Providers who can leverage NetWatcher to drive new revenue streams with their customers.
In advance of the company we launched a new website designed to help customers and MSPs understand the benefits of the solution to their organizations.
During the awards portion of the conference, NetWatcher was honored with the “Best in Show” award for its innovative and promising solution designed specifically to address the security needs of small and medium-size businesses (SMBs). NetWatcher works to immediately alert SMBs when customer or employee data is at risk. For example, weak passwords, unsecure assets, unsafe employee behavior, and outdated software are all things that require continuous monitoring to defend against cyber-attacks.
Despite the constant threat of attack towards SMBs, many companies still lack sufficient protection to thwart off cyber criminals. Check out the top five vulnerabilities that are often overlooked by SMBs.
Congrats to our client Scott Suhy and the entire NetWatcher team. Keep an eye out for much more to come in the coming months from this promising company that is addressing a major need in the market which is currently underserved.
To learn more about how Bluetext can help you be best in show, too, click here:
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” The age old philosophical question that actually has a lot of applicability to modern marketing. The truth is that the best marketing campaign with the perfect message will fall flat if there is not an audience of people to see it. data mining At Bluetext, our go to market can be divided into three areas that must work in concert to be successful:
- Brand Strategy, which focuses on creating the right message and brand positioning;
- Brand Presentation, which focuses on taking that message and making it visual; and
- Brand Delivery, which focuses on taking that strongly designed visual message and delivering it out into the market via multiple channels.
The dirty little secret is that so many companies focus on their strategy and their presentation but then fail to really attack the proper channels for the delivery of their message. So here are four things you should be asking yourselves or your marketing agency to ensure that your message is delivered to the right audiences in order to properly achieve your goals:
- Do you have a database and are you leveraging it? There are many modern techniques for properly leveraging your corporate database to drive awareness and interest in your products or services beyond sending out HTML email blasts. Just this week Google announced a new product called Customer Match that will let advertisers upload lists of emails and match them to signed-in Google users on Gmail, Search and YouTube. This same functionality is available inside of Facebook for very specific targeting.
- What conversations are you a part of or could you be a part of? What assets (people) do you have that we could insert into conversations to better position your company as thought leaders to drive thought provoking agendas? Have you created an editorial calendar that you review each week and track against KPIs?
- Are you putting any budget to paid media? If you are looking to drive leads as opposed to straight awareness then taking a portion of the budget and putting it toward paid channels (for sponsored content, advertorial, infographics, etc.) is critical for success. Think about going programmatic as well to maximize every dollar. My partner Rick Silipigni wrote a blog post about this approach recently – check it out here – https://bluetext.com/planning-a-digital-media-buy-get-with-the-programmatic/
- Are you thinking outside the box? Every company has a handful of activities that they take on from a marketing standpoint every quarter, but only the most successful companies carve out budget to launch innovative campaigns to drive differentiation in the market. Every quarter you should be asking your team and your agency for ideas that would be considered innovative and outside the box. Check out this amazing pop up book my team just created for Workday to help them tell their story in a unique way…http://www.workday.com/payroll_evolution.php
Branding is no different than any other business investment. In the end, it comes down to return on investment.
The challenge is that with branding, ROI can be difficult to measure. You can look at increased sales. You can see an uptick in your social media and digital media analytics. One of the toughest questions to anwers, however, is if an acquisition were to occur, how much precisely is the purchase price affected by branding or even that a deal is in play because of brand investment?
What I can confidently say is that branding can contribute enormously. It can contribute to the possibility of your business being acquired and the value the ownership receives for the business.
Executives constantly question how a re-brand impacts enterprise value and the probability of being acquired. Here are some reasons that should open your eyes to the “why” of re-branding and the impact it can have on your enterprise.
Re-positioning. Through the lens of a rebrand could be a signal to the market that you are now an expert and market leader in the hottest and fastest growing market segments in your industry. This re-positioning exercise makes your business much more attractive.
Internationalization. In some cases re-branding is necessary so that a brand can also be used internationally. This may be because the brand name is too specific to a particular country. In certain countries a brand name may also conjure up the wrong associations. Organizations that sell the same products in several countries but under different brand names are also increasingly opting to use one brand internationally.
Bad Reputation. Bad reputations can have a serious impact on the enterprise value of a company. Re-branding can ensure that negative associations with the brand are forgotten or dispelled, both outside and inside an organization. This is the only way that a branding effort can remove any negative feelings about the brand.
Other reasons to re-brand include an outdated image or visual identity, or when a new CEO is put in place. These business changes usually have a desire to send a signal to the market that this isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile.
Bluetext has had quite a run of helping companies shape their brands as they position for growth and some type of liquidity event.
Some recent branding to acquisition stories can be found here:
Sourcefire Acquired by Cisco for $2.7 Billion (12 months after rebrand launch)
Sourcefire Case Study from Bluetext on Vimeo.
Acentia Acquired by MAXIMUS for $300 Million (4 years after rebrand launch)
Altimeter Acquired by Prophet (18 months after rebrand launch)
We recently launched some exciting re-branding efforts, including Cigital’s following their $50 million capital raise. The live website, the centerpiece of the branding effort can be found here. It will be interesting to see if our recent brand births eventually blossom into great acquisition stories. Are you next to be acquired? Lets talk about your brand and how we can help.
We get a lot of requests from companies of all sizes looking to “rebrand.” These requests can range from changing some colors and messaging, to completely overhauling a brand and website to address a new market or opportunity where the current brand identity may not be sufficient to address emerging corporate goals.
Enterprises across all industries face a lot of tough questions when deciding on the degree of their rebrand. Is the logo in play? Should the company consider a name change? Is there a mascot or other brand element that drives the culture? Have they gotten as far as they can with the current brand? Are there situations whereby they want to enter a new market and their current brand can actually be detrimental to future success?
To answer these questions we combine insights from both inside and outside the corporate walls, as well as the competitive environment and external market factors to define a path forward that helps them achieve their future corporate goals while addressing different budgetary requirements.
Sometimes there are brand elements that are so ingrained in the culture that tough decisions emerge. A great example was the first time we were asked to rebrand Sourcefire. Sourcefire rose to fame with the commercialization of its open source intrusion detection software product Snort in the 2000s. The product included a massive community of loyal and dedicated supporters who were passionate about Snort and its technical capabilities. They helped the company grow in terms of revenues and fame, and were closely aligned with the company’s mascot Snorty the Pig.
Snorty the pig was always associated with the brand, and all marketing materials including an annual calendar were very popular across the IT security community.
They engaged the Bluetext team to drive legitimacy for the company and brand as they looked to diversify their revenue base into Government. This was a new audience and there was a feeling that the Snort Pig mascot and company attitude would not play well. Following a thorough discovery process our recommendation was to tone down Snorty without eliminating him from their marketing efforts. Our goal was to present the brand as more stable and conservative. The results were tremendous. When they came back to us three years later to rebrand again, Snorty was playing a significantly less prominent role but they continued to leverage the pig in ways to embrace the old while expanding into new markets. The rest for Sourcefire is history as they were sold for $2.7 billion to Cisco in 2013.
The lessons learned from Sourcefire are quite valuable. Many factors need to be assessed to measure the value of your brand equity with your current and prospective customers, including search equity, brand equity and association, and name recognition. If your current customers are loyal and you are in a position of strength with them, but you need help entering a new market, they should understand the reasons for the rebrand and what it means to them without disrupting their relationship with you.
As brands mature, what has gotten them to one point may not be the best path to get to the next level. Many factors should be addressed. Weigh the pros and cons, and don’t make judgments based on gut. Look at the market, assess the opportunity, and make sure to give your brand the best chance at long term success. While you may be succeeding in many categories, it is possible that you have to take a step back in order to move forward. Here are six questions that must be answered when embarking on a “rebrand” effort:
1. How will this rebrand impact current customers?
2. Have you taken this brand as far as it can go?
3. How will your current brand play with prospective customers in new or adjacent markets?
4. Have you thoroughly analyzed the market to see what the outside world thinks about our brand and market positioning?
5. Are you positioning around how customers search for and consume products or services, or how you internally orient your business?
6. Do you want to zag if all of your competitors zig?
A rebrand effort can come in many shapes and sizes. Make sure you do a thorough assessment of your needs and growth opportunities, as it is critical to never disrupt your business as you embrace the market through a rebranding effort.
This is part 1 of a 5 part series by Bluetext about innovation in marketing and communications.
Before hurling yourself into a production and budget battlefield to get that amazing video shot for your next campaign or brand asset, marketing commandoes now have a variety of tiny, toss-able reconnaissance robots they can hurl into any business or consumer use case as it follows you around and keeps your brand battling above its weight class.
For challenger brands without the resources of a major real estate marketer or major retailer etc, they can now have million dollar footage integrated in their marketing mix of assets for amazingly low cost.
These tactical flying robots have gained a ton of traction within the marketing world as of late for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that any time you send a robot to execute an expensive and trick task, you’re not sending a human. And that is scalable and cost effective. Traditionally robots are generally complicated, fickle machines packing a lot of moving parts. They often require on the ground pilot operators to undergo special training just to learn how to use them and fly them everytime. Not this technology, toss and follow. Really amazing technology and solution.
Removing the pilot and giving this new paint brush to the creative minds in marketing departments and their partner agencies will really improve the experiences we will start to see as this innovation sinks into the millions of brand messages we see a day.
At Bluetext we work with many companies that can benefit from this kind of technology. For example, in our real estate practice, we see many of our clients like JLL, Kettler and HomeVisit to leverage this kind of technology to deliver better more impactful imagery to deliver their product and service to market.
Interested in being innovative with your brand, marketing or communications? Talk to Bluetext
As business grows, driving innovation can be challenging. Bluetext recently developed this mascot character to inspire one of our clients to drive innovation and promote an innovative spirit across its global client projects.
Bluetext named her Ana-Vation – a female spin on the key phrase Innovation.
Bluetext loves these kind of creative challenges. We see companies like consulting firms and government contractors that need to find ways of driving innovation as employee de-centralization and work on client sites can be a cultural challenge.
Here are some ideas to drive innovation in your marketing, branding, and overall cultural efforts:
- Be easygoing.
- Hire for culture.
- Bring on people who love the work they do.
- Build a diverse workforce.
- Manage innovation in a transparent methodical fashion.
- Schedule time for brainstorming.
- Tolerate and expect mistakes.
This week, just in time for its Global Sales Conference in Orlando, Bluetext client CSC (NYSE: CSC) launched its redesigned, fully responsive website. This was an incredible collaboration that the Bluetext team is so pleased to have been involved with from the beginning.
As one of our largest clients, CSC is always pushing Bluetext to think outside the box to get more creative and push the limits for the global brand. Over the past year we have collaborated on several exciting projects including their Digital Briefing Center (http://www.csc.com/digital_briefing_center/aut/110681-digital_briefing_center) and their Manufacturing industry go to market web experience (www.csc.com/OM).
Last fall we proactively approached them to highlight several areas of their corporate website that we believed could evolve. I guess it is just in our nature to try and proactively look at our clients key marketing channels and make recommendations to push them out of their comfort zone in ways that we feel could be executed more flawlessly.
Our client Nick Panayi, Head of Global Brand & Digital Marketing for CSC, spearheaded this effort and had this to say:
The thing I value the most in Bluetext as a true partner is that they don’t tell us what we want to hear, but what they truly think is needed with solutions ready. You cannot teach an agency to do that. That is in the DNA of the agency. And once you find that, my recommendation is to keep that agency around for a long time.
The new fully responsive website design centers around the key technology focus areas that CSC is driving solutions for into market. Big beautiful imagery and clear calls to action, all aligned with cross industry brand efforts are hallmarks of the new site. We worked with their in-house development team to integrate many modern techniques, including a snap navigation for a seamless browsing experience and a smart lazy loading strategy for fast browsing.
The launch of the new csc.com is the first phase in a multi-phase rollout for CSC with new phases rolling out in the coming weeks. We are very proud of our partnership with CSC.
Working at a Washington DC digital agency that works with brands spanning the largest, most cautious Fortune 500 companies to the most speedy of start-ups disrupting every corner of Earth, we need to back up our creative and marketing recommendations with stats. Here are some that stats could arm you in your next planning phase, ranging from user experience design to marketing promotion and branding.
WHO ARE YOU BROWSING FOR?
The latest stats are in from the US Government on Browser and device usage. Plan your next website user experience design based on these stats as well as the stats from your analytic application.
WHAT DID THAT ICON SAY?
According to ScienceDaily’s recent study, Icons need to tell something very clearly or face horrible usability issues with your user experience.
The recent report asked users to look at an icon and try to avoid thinking of both the word of that image, as well as how many letters that word had (for example, a subject is told to look at a iPhone and not think “iPhone” or think “6,” the number of letters in the word). Nearly 80% of people could not stop themselves from “sub-speaking” the word in their head and only 50% could stop themselves from saying the number of letters in the word. Stopping the brain from making associations in the subconscious is nearly impossible, which makes it extremely important to ensure that visual icons and representations are completely recognizable and aren’t easily confused by the user to have another meaning.
Placement of icons should not just be for visual effect. It can actually aid your user without making them think at all. It’s important that you choose the right icons as well, because you don’t want to trigger an automatic association from your user about something unrelated to the purpose of the icon.
DO YOU PERSUADE WITH VIDEO?
A recent User Experience Dynamic study by SearchEngineWatch shows that 73% of people will convert to the sites desired action when they enhance their user experience design with video.
HAVE YOU JOURNEYED BELOW THE FOLD?
Countless recent studies are showing that almost every user (yup over 99%!) these days are scrolling below the fold. Be adventurous and think of the user experience taking place on a tall dynamic canvas.
GOT SHARES?
Facebook continues to be the most widely used social channel for sharing. It gained 8.2% share and made up 81% of all shares in Q4. Sharing activity by email also increased, but it still only represents about 1% of total share volume. Looking at the channel distribution of sharing on mobile, Facebook edges out the competition even further. Facebook activity jumped 51% from last year and now represents 85% of mobile sharing activity. Pinterest and Twitter have also gained traction on mobile.