Experiential Product and Corporate Names

Experiential names offer a direct connection to something real, to a part of direct human experience. They rise above descriptive names because their message is more about the experience than the task.

For instance, in the web portal space, descriptive product names include Infoseek, GoTo, FindWhat, AllTheWeb, etc. Experiential names of web portals include such product names as Explorer, Magellan, Navigator, and Safari.

The upside:

• These names make sense to the consumer.
• They map to the consumer's experience with the company or product.
• Because they require little explanation, experiential names are easily approved in a corporate process.
• They work best for products within a brand strategy designed to accumulate brand equity for both the company and the product.
• Experiential company and product names are most effective for the early entrants in a business sector, becoming less effective for later adopters.

The downside:

• Because they are so intuitive, experiential names are embraced across many industries with high frequency, making them harder to trademark.
• These are names that tend to be historically common in the branding world.
• Their over-usage makes them less effective in the long run. For instance, while Explorer, Navigator and Safari are web portal names, they are also the names of SUVs.
• The similarity in tone of these names across an industry is indicative of similarities in positioning. As web portal names, Explorer, Navigator, Safari and Magellan are all saying exactly the same things in exactly the same ways to exactly the same people. Consequently, they aren't pulling any weight when it comes to differentiating a brand.