Brand naming - how GE did it
Brand Matters recently participated in a financial services branding conference in New York where business leaders shared recent branding initiatives.
The following is a success story of GE’s 40% increase in brand awareness of their sub-branded GE financial services division due to a well researched, systematic, and engaging name selection process.
The name selection process went as follows: name-harvesting sessions were conducted in 2006 and generated 200+ names. All of these options were evaluated against GE’s positioning statement. This process narrowed the field down to 21 names. Each of these was then tested using qualitative and quantitative research in over 10 countries with thousands of panellists. This stage resulted in four names which each then went through a trademark and legal review. Based upon all of the data recovered throughout the process, GE Money was crowned champion.
Some of the names being considered included; GE Money+, GE Go Ahead, GE 123, GE Spring, GE Simple Money, GE Ready Money, etc. The theme throughout these is ‘simplicity’, an important characteristic for a parent brand that:
Spreads across 54 countries;
Employs 307,000 people (2005 figure);
Operates in many languages;
Offers products and services in multiple industries; and
Serves 130MM customers worldwide.
The theme of ‘simplicity’ is delivered throughout the GE Money organization and is the backbone of their vision – “surprisingly simple”. Most importantly, the name ‘GE Money' as well as its development process, aligns with this theme and GE’s organizational wide need for stakeholder engagement. This further entrenches these core values, and processes into GE’s internal brand culture and strengthens its existence throughout the entire organization.
Although we don’t all have an asset base in the $200B range like GE, this scaleable framework is worth keeping in mind the next time you are developing a new brand or find yourself in a re-branding initiative. A recent book, The Omnipowerful Brand, presents an alternate point of view on the process of brand naming.
