What’s in a Brand Name? | Hacker News Reader

What’s in a Brand Name?

newyorker.com

47 pointswaqasaday11 comments

> it settled on one that has since become a byword for failure: Edsel

The Ford Edsel didn't fail because of the name. It was a hyped "advanced" product that also had build quality issues, and questionable styling. Mechanics didn't trust the combustion technology so they couldn't recommend the "new" tech. A lot of simple reasons that people didn't buy it.

The name, of course, was that of Henry Ford's son, Edsel Ford. The product was expected to be "the future", but it unfortunately didn't work in the present well enough.

It got a bad rep, like the Corvair, and consumers stayed away in droves.

Yikes, "Tronc". I assume "Tonic" was taken? Because that would be dramatically more sonorous, fit the same general pattern of drawing from "Tribune Online Content", and additionally contain playful suggestions of "healing tonic" (heal the broken media) and "gin and tonic" (reporters drink like fish).

I bet if Tronc the business had been successful, we would have praised Tronc the brand name as a bold and successful move.

A lot of money and time goes into naming products, logos, color schemes, etc. (Believe me, I know :-)) And I strongly suspect that, aside from exceptional cases in one direction or the other, very little makes much of a difference except at the margins. Of course, "at the margins" can still represent a lot of money but it's rarely what's going to make or break a product or company.

I think tonic risks sounding too much like "toxic," though, giving the word an overall foreboding connotation... Or is that just for me?

Plonk would have been a better name.

Great names are built not found. This is all you need to know.

On the other hand, companies like Google, Twitter (twwtr at first), (the)Facebook, etc. also didn't overdo it. You should put some effort in the name for sure, but don't worry too much about it in the beginning.

Just grab a free logo from http://logodust.com and come up with a name, any name, figure out if people want the product. Don't let this article stop you from making progress.

Thanks for the spam

I got more from his comment than yours, even with a steep "spam" penalty. Sometimes the sheriff is worse than the criminal.

Because my comment otherwise adds nothing, here is a random fact: the French courts of 17/18th century had to invent the first "a/c" because of their clothing. Air was wafted over blocks of ice to cool it down, then continued fanning to the court.

Fashion brought us A/C.

Touché.

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