Grace Chen

Writing Sample
 Effectiveness of Energy Drink Names:
An Exploration of Brand Names and Meanings

Grace Chen
Hyo-Kyung (Kylie) Hong
Jessica Martin
Ting Wu

University of Illinois
481 Project Proposal
September 26, 2008

Introduction

Have you had the experience of traveling to a foreign country, standing in the aisle at a supermarket, and suddenly

feeling overwhelmed? Not only because of the unfamiliar products, but also because of those bizarre names shown

on the packages? A product name shoulders significant responsibility for conveying messages to potential custom-

ers. Without the ability to read these messages intelligently, foreign people are lost in an abyss of unassociated

meanings. Bright and effective brand names, simple as a word or short phrase, have the power to make products

sparkle and stand out, suggesting a promising future. Previous research in branding has shown that people are often

willing to spend more money on prestigious brand names even if the product is basically the same as a less presti-

giously named or even generic version. The right name helps sell a product every time someone talks about it or

even walks by it in a store. Making customers stumble over a brand name will tremendously discourage them from

purchasing the product. In today’s fast-moving consumer setting a well-named substitute might be just a glance

away. Even in-depth research about creating the right brand name may not yield a name that guarantees successful

sales. Nevertheless, the naming process should be undertaken with careful consideration because many blunders

are avoidable. After all, names represent the identity of the products. Packaging can be changed, distribution relo-

cated, commercials re-created, but names are stuck, unless a product is to be removed from the market and com-

pletely relaunched.

What brand names do

An effective brand name can help make a product stand out, get noticed, and appeal to the consumer. Conversely, a

brand name that is not successful at creating positive associations can do just the opposite, by failing to gain

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marketplace distinctiveness or even by creating an unfavorable image for the product (Klink, 2000). In an

increasingly competitive brand landscape where the number of trademarked names is steadily increasing, creating

new brands that are distinctive and effective is more challenging than ever before (Bogart and Lehman, 1973;

Klink, 2000). In addition to capturing audience attention, a brand name conveys information about the product and

its positioning. It may tell the consumer, in the marketing equivalent of a sound byte, what a product does, what it

is like or who it is for. This aspect of brand naming has often been referred to in research studies as “connotation,”

a broad term for a complex set of associations and meanings linked to or conveyed by the brand name.

Our research will attempt to closely examine the connotations linked to prospective names for a fictitious energy

drink brand. In doing so we will attempt to separate the connotation of each brand name into some if its

constituent parts so we can examine how each of these components affects the overall appeal of the brand names.

What’s in a name?

The image that a consumer associates with a branded product can develop over time as a result of advertising and

marketing efforts, but the name itself, divorced from the marketing mix, may have intrinsic qualities that can aid

the creation of positive associations, convey information about the product, or suggest an attribute not native to

the product that enhances its appeal (Bogart & Lehman, 1973; Kohli & LaBahn, 1997). Many scholars have

investigated the linguistic components of names and how they affect consumer preference or memory. Bergh,

Adler and Oliver (1987) performed a study of the phonetic, orthographic and morphological devices in popular

brand names. They concluded that popular brand naming was not based on conscious linguistic criteria. However,

Richard Klink (2000) investigated the influence of sound symbolism on associated meanings of brand names, and

found that particular vowel and consonant sound categories can evoke different meanings. For example, he found

that brand names containing frictives (f, s, v, and z) are generally perceived as smaller, faster and more feminine

than brand names containing stops (p, t, b, d, g). Brand name preferences resulting from phonetic makeup can also

carry richer semantics than their linguistic components alone. In a study of what they call “name letter branding”

Brendl, Chattopadhyay, Pelham and Carvallo (2005) concluded that people show a preference toward the letters

that appear in their own names when selecting brands. So, for example, a person named Caroline might be more

likely to choose Coca-Cola, whereas a person named Peter might be more likely to choose Pepsi.
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How should a brand name be selected?

Brand managers and research scientists are in general agreement about the importance of selecting brand names

carefully and wisely, but there is no consensus on what elements are necessary for a successful brand name.

Collins (1977) explains that names are evaluations derived not only from explicit logical analysis, but also from

intuition and instinct. Collins concluded that a name should:

Be unique
Be distinctive, but also remindful of the product category
Be easy to read
Be easy to say
Have semantic and/or symbolic undertones/overtones, to convey the intended “feeling tone” to the customer
Have staying power

Zinkhan and Martin (1987) found that respondents preferred brand names that contained descriptive information

about the product category (“typical” names) to brand names that did not (“atypical names”). According to Kohli

and LaBahn (1997), the most important naming criteria to brand managers are relevance to product category,

connotation and image generated, overall appeal, and ease of recognition and recall. Keller, Heckler and

Houston (1998) investigated the extent to which brand names that communicated relevant product information,

such as an attribute or benefit, (defined as the “suggestiveness” of a brand name) were remembered by

participants. They found that qualities cued by suggestive brand names were significantly easier for participants

to remember than those not cued by suggestive brand names. However, Kohli, Harich and Leuthesser (2005)

conducted laboratory research that showed that even though a non-meaningful brand name may be at a

disadvantage early in its life, repeated exposure to the brand may yield incremental gains in brand evaluations

that exceed those for meaningful names. Bao, Shao and Rivers (2008) investigated the effects of three categories

—relevance, connotation, and pronouncability—on brand preferences, and found that the interactions between

these categories did not significantly influence brand choice, but that each independently did influence

brand choice.

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Descriptive Research

Prior research has suggested that positive connotation, or feelings associated with brand names are key to the

success of the name. However, in the product category we selected for this research, energy drinks, we find that

many existing brand names have a distinctly negative connotation, often associated with concepts such as

violence and mental illness (e.g. “Monster”, “Rage Asylum”.)

We plan to investigate aspects of connotation for our product in an attempt to isolate which connotative

categories have the strongest influence on overall name preference. We have generated four categories of names

that explore relevance to the product category and connotation and will develop a survey that measures responses

to the categories as well as the individual names. In addition to these dimensions we will measure ease of

pronunciation, length preferences, and overall appeal for each product name. Our participants will be UIUC s

tudents, recruited without selection on the basis of their gender, sex, ethnicity and intended degree and we will

recruit them on campus. We will ask them to fill out a questionnaire that lists 5 product names in each of 4

dimensions, for a total of 20 names. Respondents will provide demographic information, and data about current

energy drink consumption habits, and will be asked to rate each name on the basis of appropriateness for its

category, ease of pronunciation, and overall appeal, where “appeal” means general feeling about the name, and

likelihood of purchase.

In this study, relevance refers to how each name enables the participant to recognize the product as an energy

drink when they first hear the name. Relevance describes the association between the product name and the

concept “energy.” We included this as our first category because it explores the degree to which descriptive

information about the product category is related to name preference. We have 3 additional non-descriptive

dimensions that explore aspects of the concept “energy drink” that may varyingly appeal to the respondent:

strength, youth, and flavor.

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Our name generation process was similar to the corporate model described by Kohli and LaBahn (1997). They

provide a detailed review of the process by which consumer and industrial goods manufacturers produce and

select prospective brand names. Traditional methods of individual creative thinking and brainstorming were the

most commonly used devices for the creation of new names among the companies surveyed, although 33% also r

eported using knowledge management techniques, that is, they asked company employees for suggestions. We

relied on brainstorming and individual creative thinking to generate a pool of names and then used a quantitative

rating system within our group to select the most popular choices. The twenty product names selected are listed

in Table 1.

Table 1
Energy Strength Youth Flavor
Words Words Words Words
Activerve Shark OMG Yumm
Vitalift Vital Force Imah Swagga Cosmoburst
Skyrocket Grenade Hotty Sizz
Recharge Dynamo Zessy Joy Moment
Powerline Hercules Zest Body Nazi Wa Oh!

Experimental Research

Following the completion of our descriptive research, we will attempt further investigation into the gender

implications of energy drink names, as well as possible further research in other aspects of connotation. Through

observation of existing energy drink names we have learned that names are often associated with either masculine

or feminine features. From masculine names like “Bawls” or “King888” to an obviously feminine “Her,” many

names appear designed to appeal to a predominantly male or female target consumer. Some energy drink names

also use highly sexualized names, such as “Playboy” or “Deep Throat” that rely on a highly gendered context for

brand-name associations. We would like to do further testing on this feature in the experimental part of this project.

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We may also do further research in the area of brand name pronouncability. Pronunciation may be a key factor

in whether our brand names are appealing to consumers. It can consist of many different components such as

linguistic structure or phonetic makeup, and we are curious whether consumers would prefer specific phonetic f

eatures in energy drink brand names as well as whether they dislike some features in particular. Based on these

various pronunciation-related studies, we would like to further test the effectiveness of pronunciation in energy

drinks names.

References

Bao, Yeqing, Shao, Alan T. & Rivers, Drew (2008). Creating New Brand Names: The Effects of Relevance,
Connotation and Pronunciation. Journal of Advertising Research, volume 48 (March), 148-162.

Bergh, Bruce V., Adler, Keith, & Oliver, Lauren (1987). Linguistic Distinction Among Top Brand Names.
Journal of Advertising Research, August/September, 39-44.

Bogart, Leo & Lehman, Charles (1973). What Makes a Brand Name Familiar?
Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. X (February), 17-22.

Brendl, Miguel C., Chattapadhyay, Amitava, Pelham, Brett W., & Carvallo, Mauricio (2005).
Name Letter Branding: Valence Transfers When Product Specific Needs Are Active. J
ournal of Consumer Research, volume 32 (December), 405-415.

Collins, Leslie (1977). A Name to Conjure With. European Journal of Marketing, volume 11 (5), 340-363.

Keller, Kevin L., Heckler, Susan E., & Houston, Michael J. (1998).
The Effects of Brand Name Suggestiveness on Advertising Recall.
Journal of Marketing, volume 62 (January), 48-57.

Klink, Richard R. (2000). Creating Brand Names with Meaning: The Use of Sound Symbolism.
Marketing Letters, 11 (1), 5-20.

Kohli, Chiranjeev S., Harich, Katrin R., & Leuthesser, Lance (2005).
Creating Brand Identity: A Study of Evaluation of New Brand Names. J
ournal of Business Research, volume 58 (November), 1506-1515.

Kohli, Chiranjeev S., & LaBahn, Douglas W. (1997)

Observations: Creating Effective Brand Names: A Study of the Naming Process.
Journal of Advertising Research. volume 37 (January/February), 67-75.

Zinkhan, George M. & Martin, Claude R. (1987).

New Brand Names and Inferential Beliefs: Some Insights on Naming New Products.
Journal of Business Research, volume 15, 157-172.