The Name Game

Written by Shirley Ellis and Lincoln Chase, “The Name Game,” or “The Banana Song,” creates a catchy number out of a simple rhyming game. You know, “Shirley, Shirley, banana-fana fo firley…” OK, it’s a little hard to explain. Watch this YouTube video. Go ahead, we’ll wait.

The Name Game on YouTube

Now that the song’s burrowed in your head, you can see what we mean about catchy—illustrating, we think, the power of a name. “The Name Game” went to number three on the Billboard Hot 100. A great name can get you money, fame and YouTube immortality.

While developing a name for a brand isn’t quite as simple as rhyming “Shirley” with “whirley,” the right brand name can have the same propulsive effect. A great brand name can make you stand out and put you at the forefront of consumers’ minds. A bad name can make you blend in, confuse consumers or turn people off. Think about the brand names in your industry. There’s probably a couple that pop against a background of dull and instantly remind you of the core qualities of those brands, while the rest blend together in a mass of blah and bad.

Your name is an essential element of your brand. But the work doesn’t end there. You can have the most creative, most on-target name around, but if you don’t invest in your brand, all the time and money you spent finding that name won’t matter. And a seemingly plain-Jane name, with brilliant branding, can make a brand shine brighter than all the others. Take Apple—a fine name, certainly unique for a technology company, but probably not anything you would have drooled over in a concept presentation meeting. Today, Apple is ranked 8th among Interbrand’s 100 Best Global Brands of 2011, with an estimated value of over $153 billion.

So if you’re playing The Name Game, remember that you’ve just begun to build your brand. You need the name name fo fame, but there’s a whole lot else that needs to be done to create a standout brand brand fo fand.