Name branding is one of the more important decisions in your business

PEI are cute puppies not a vacation spot for Regis and Kelly (image Flying Colors Canine)

Before you get stuck with someone else’s name, spend some time developing a brand name that will be your own.

Atlantic Canadians know PEI as a cute Island and a great place to vacation or party on the May weekend.

The rest of the world thinks PEI is a cute puppy with a wrinkly face.

How did that happen?

Without looking, “PEI” has become the wrong brand for our Island. Henceforth we shall be called “Prince Edward Island” and not “PEI”.

Dog breeders of Shar-PEI puppies are flooding the internet with sites and stories that will replace our Island in the Google search engines of the world.

Lately, my Google update for “PEI’ has included as many stories about dogs as it does about PEI hockey and curling. It’s only a matter of time before those little puppy stories out number stories about PEI. When they do, Google will shift it’s attention from PEI tourism to PEI puppies. 

The Department of Tourism may be wise to this. They had Regis and Kelly refer to us constantly as Prince Edward Island.

Name Branding not regional

In the pre-internet world, your business could establish a brand that was local. Since your market was only within the range of the local newspaper or TV station, business and product names could be cribbed from other products.

Forget about that today. You are competing with hundreds of millions of websites that are trying to vie for first page in a Google search. A copied name will only get you page 20 and customer confusion.

Picking a unique business name has never been more important.

Usually musicians and artists pick something unique for a stage name. Robert Zimmerman changed to Bob Dylan, no doubt trading on our image of Dylan Thomas the Welsh poet and Bob as an all-around good guy.

Sometimes, they don’t research enough. Mars Hill was a popular indie band on PEI. They had a unique sound but their name as an extremely popular church in Washington and a college in North Carolina. Forget the other musical groups. Getting attention on the internet with Mars Hill was a hopeless endeavor.

Creating your own name

Making up a unique and memorable name has become a difficult but not hopeless task. I’ve made a few mistakes which I’ll pass along.

My first businesses used my personal name – not to hard “Steve’s Cleaning Services”, “Stephen Pate Bookkeeping.” That’s easy to remember and associate with a person and still the best way to identify a small sole proprietorship.

Branching out I established “Island Computer Services” in 1981 which worked wonders since the market was PEI only and before the effects of worldwide marketing. We discovered a few years later that we had competitors with similar names in Long Island New York and Vancouver Island, BC.

The software company from Island Computer was expected to be world wide. The name “Aquilium Software” was made-up, a construction of bad Latin – “Aquila” for eagle and “ium” for home of or nest of.  It wasn’t particularly hard to invent. Intel had changed from 586 to “Pentium” for their processors. We simply took that flight of fancy and went with the eagle.  With some marketing effort and a trademark, the name was secured for world wide business.

“NJN Network” is one of those against the rules names. It was chosen in a hurry as the acronym for “Not Just the News”. A little research would have identified NJN as an acronym for New Jersey News a PBS station. At first, we got lost in the world of Google – on the 100th page. However, through dint of effort, time and posting thousands of stories across millions of sites we arrived.

Today NJN Network fights for first place on the Google search engine with New Jersey Public Television and Radio. It’s not a brilliant name for this site but now it has stuck.

Before you get stuck with the name of another business or organization, spend some time developing a brand name that will be your own.