Lexicon® Branding creating strategic brand names and brand architectures

Q. What is the significance of brand names?

A Brand name is the foundation of trust. It is the first step in generating interest and getting the audience to listen to the brand’s story or to simply observe the brand’s behavior in the market.

While names have always been important, the digital economy and all of its innovations like Google, Meta and Spotify have made naming more critical. In today’s marketplace names just have to do more and work harder than ever before. Here’s why: 1. Consumers have more choices, and more information available than ever before – breaking through all that with a strong and memorable signal requires new approaches to name development. 2. Names are instantly global adding the requirement that the new name must work across relevant markets and cultures. 3. The thousands of existing trademarks make registration and protection of a new name almost impossible, requiring new approaches to IP evaluations.

Q. But just how crucial is an effective name?

According to several studies, 95% of all new products fail. We also know that gaining early momentum - which includes both early market share and revenue - are the primary predictors of success. In the first 6 months of a product’s rollout, the new name plays the most significant role. The goal of every new product program must be to develop the brand name as the product’s or the new company’s most distinctive and memorable marketing asset.

Lexicon Branding is one of the most well-known and respected companies in the branding and advertising industry. The company created the brand names Impossible Foods, Sonos, Lucid Motors, P&G’s Swiffer and Febreze, Subaru’s Outback and Forester, Intel’s Pentium and Xeon computer processors, Coca-Cola’s Dasani waters, the BlackBerry phone and more.

Lexicon has focused on creating brand names that help businesses establish new products and services efficiently and effectively since 1982. To accomplish this, the company creates names that are unique, distinct, and memorable.

In conversation with David Placek, President and Founder of Lexicon Branding

Q. What was the motivation behind starting Lexicon Branding?

It was a basic insight. The world was getting smaller and more interconnected; technology was expanding into many categories, and I believed that brand names and brand architecture would become increasingly important. The vision was to create a company that offered a fully integrated suite of services, from strategy to creative and linguistics to trademark clearance. It took about 10 years to put it all together.

Q. What is the most important factor that contributes most to your success?

We have an innovative process that is unlike any other player in the space. Our process, combined with a remarkable list of clients and broad awareness in the marketplace, makes Lexicon the #1 brand naming firm in the world. We have developed compelling credentials over a 40-year period. An important factor in our leadership is the deep R&D investments that we have made in linguistics, cognitive science, and software development. To create truly memorable names, you must know how the brain works, how we process information, and even how we as humans learn to speak. To gain all that knowledge and proprietary insights, we knew we needed to invest.

Q. How do you create a purposeful and consistently executed branding process?

As an independent company with a highly focused mission, we have had the opportunity to invest well over $5 million in basic research to develop proprietary linguistic and cognitive science insights and software that we apply to brand development. While process is important, insights and principles deliver a competitive advantage.

We apply a combination of small team creativity and structural linguistics that is unique to the industry. The company’s engineering layer of cognitive science, linguistics, and software is a first in the naming business.

Q. Due to regulatory constraints on marketing and traditional branding, retailers’ awareness levels among consumers may be predicated on their ability to responsibly scale. How do you help to improve brand recognition through your offerings?

Brand recognition begins with a provocative and memorable name. Without that combination, any new brand starts out inherently weak. Our mission is to develop names that offer asymmetric advantages—they don’t tell the story, but they signal that this new brand has an interesting story to tell. Impossible Foods, Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, and Sonos are great examples of our work.

Q. What new endeavors is your company currently undertaking?

In this New Year, we will be launching a new brand strategy, experience, and architecture offering that integrates our Creative Studio in even more innovative ways. As an extension of this brand strategy, experience, and architecture launch, we will also be offering a new corporate rebranding package for clients.

Q. What plans for transformation are you pursuing to remain relevant now and in the future?

The next phase of Lexicon will be the developments of Lexicon Launch, a service that will help our clients launch their new brands. At this point, we have participated in hundreds of launches; we know what works. It is time for us to deliver that knowledge and experience via an innovative new service.

Q. What is your final message to The Silicon Review readers and to your current and future customers and partners?

There are two key messages:

1. Brand names are far more valuable than ever before. Created to serve as a strategic element, a brand name can play a fundamental role in developing early share and profitability. However, generating a distinctive and unforgettable name (not just a memorable name) with effective linguistic values is now almost impossible to develop and register. Consumers are less loyal, have shorter attention spans, and are more distracted than ever before. Companies face more competition than ever before, making it harder to stand out. Trademark clutter can only be described as extreme across all 45 international trademark classes. Clearance rates have fallen dramatically in the last 15 years and will continue to fall.
2. We are hiring! We are looking for bright, ambitious talent to join our team and continue to develop powerful brand names. If anyone is interested or has agency experience, please reach out. Specifically, we are looking for an experienced Account Coordinator, Sr. Account Manager, and Chief of Staff to the CEO.

Creating unforgettable brand names and giving them a memorable identity

David Placek is the President and Founder of Lexicon Branding. Much of Lexicon’s success has been attributed to David Placek’s vision and his creative leadership. However, the dozens of employees at Lexicon have greatly contributed to the effort. According to David, “without the team members that have joined Lexicon over the last 4 decades and the many, many great clients and long term client relationships we have formed, we would not be nearly as successful as we have been.”

“We create company, product, and brand names to play strategic communication roles.”