 Great photo by Grok. “Blend word”?? What the heck is that?
More importantly, how can you make money off of one of these things? Let’s dive in. As is the case with lots of our articles here at Copel Communications, this one is based on a real client story. And as is the case with all of the real client stories we use as inspiration for articles, this one, like the others, has been anonymized for privacy purposes. But you’ll still get the gist. And the takeaways. Here’s the story: Recently, a client of ours wanted us to develop some pitch materials for a new business they were developing. Excitedly, they told that they’d already come up with a name for this new business, and were looking forward to registering a domain for it. The name of this new business (we’re modifying/anonymizing/making this up) was “Asset Protect.” “Asset Protect.” Hmmm. Well, you can guess, pretty accurately, what they do. So that’s good. But boy is that name ever generic. Which is not good. Can you guess where this story goes? Of course: Our client had one tough time registering that “unique” domain. “Asset Protect” had long been taken, by someone else, in an equally straightforward/uncreative foray. Portmanteau to the rescue To us, the solution to this problem was super simple. Employ a portmanteau or blend word. “Portmanteau” is about as funny a term as “blend word,” and you may not have heard of either. Not a problem. Because you know zillions of examples of these things, and you’ll say “Ohhh!” as soon as you read ones like:
We could go on forever. Applying this mashup concept to branding is equally well established and, we think, effective. Consider:
Need we go on? One of the reasons we mention this is because our frustrated client had considered inventing a totally new made-up name. That certainly comes with benefits: For example, if you invent something completely new, there won’t be any competition for it when it comes to registering your domain, and you’ll have rock-solid IP protection in the potential case of infringement. Still. The drawback is that that’s hard to do, for a basic small-to-midsized business. It takes a ton of (expensive) impressions for the whole world to know what you do. Consider:
Honestly. Would you have any idea what those companies do without their having invested zillions of dollars to inform you? So. The portmanteau/blend-word is a nice middle ground between the uninspired “Asset Protect” and the what-the-heck-is-that “Wazzibobo” or whatever. It’s not perfect. Because great minds think alike. If you’re launching a new brand and come up with what you think is the perfect portmanteau word for it, brace yourself. There’s a decent chance that someone else already came up with that one, and registered it, too. Not to worry. Keep on plugging. Or get help. Like us. Contact us for that next marketing assignment. We do things like this all the time, and would be delighted to help.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |