Naming « Merriam Associates, Inc. Brand Strategies

Merriam Associates specializes in branding that gets results. Everything we do systematically generates leads, closes sales, boosts profits, and builds a solid reputation for your company and your products or services. Our background combines the rigor of global Fortune 500 companies with the tenacity of successful entrepreneurs.

Congratulations to Geomentum

Merriam Associate’s client Geomentum is in the news with a new president, Lisa Bradner. Read about the new appointment here.

Merriam Associates created the Geomentum name a year ago when Interpublic consolidated several large local media-buying and marketing services units including newspaper buying agency NSA Media, Wahlstrom, a specialist in Yellow Pages and local search, [...]

Breaking the Motorola Brand

Splitting up Motorola

Splitting Motorola into two companies should have been a great branding opportunity—a chance to create two distinctive, focused, world leading brand names. Unfortunately, the brains behind the Motorola branding missed the opportunity. Trying to spread the Motorola brand equity across two companies destroys the brand for both.

Breaking up the company makes [...]

Obama and the U.S. Pentagon in the Naming Business: Renaming Operation Iraqi Freedom

When we think of brand names, we most often think of companies and products—but the U.S. military is also in the business of branding. The Pentagon has just announced “Operation Iraqi Freedom” is being renamed “Operation New Dawn”. The Obama administration states the new name will take effect starting September 1st to coincide with the [...]

Renaming Proxios: CEO Talks About the Process

Fast growing, innovative companies can sometimes outgrow their brands.

“Our name became constraining,” said Frank Butler, CEO of Proxios, a fast-growing company using cloud computing technology to create affordable and reliable alternatives to traditional in-house information technology and phone systems. “Our old name Super-Server did not have broad appeal and it was dated.”

Merriam Associates gave this [...]

Unintentionally Funny Brand Names: BARF Pet Food

If you have a pet, you’ve surely dealt with your share of barf. In light of that, would you eagerly feed your dog or cat BARF brand pet food?

Believe it or not, the company BARF World has made a business selling raw BARF to pet owners across the country. I’ve scoured the BARF site and [...]

Approaches to Brand Architecture

Companies manage their brand portfolios through a number of brand architecture structures, driven by company culture, markets and customers, and goals.

Single Unitary Brand Architecture
One brand creates a single powerful image, sometimes with a descriptor.

Marketing is more efficient. With one brand front and center, cross selling and cooperation are easier. The brand can lose [...]

Selected Naming Project Portfolio

Merriam Associates names almost a hundred companies and products a year. We work across categories, from consumer to B2B, from billion dollar companies to start-ups you haven’t heard of (yet). Our innovative approach creates strategically valuable names with impact.

Rebranding Proxios

Outgrowing the Brand
Proxios had its beginnings as a small technology infrastructure outsourcing company called SuperServer. The company has grown beyond its Richmond, VA roots to have a national reach and had made significant investments in cutting-edge technology. They needed a brand that would convey the true stature of the company and give it a [...]

Choosing a Name

Finding a good name is an early and difficult step when starting a company or creating a brand. Getting hung up on all the wrong issues can turn a tough task into an impossible one.

AIG Name Change to AIU

Companies who think a new image will make customers forget the past do not understand this new, media-savvy world. AIG’s name change to AIU is seen as naive, cynical, or just plain disingenuous.