What's in a Name?

“That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

The Bard had wisdom it’s clear. Were a “rose” called a “plinth”, it would be just as pretty. Perhaps we’d have babies called Billy-Plinth?

Is it true therefore that it doesn’t matter what you call your brand? If the product, service or values and culture that make up the brand are great?

I imagine that you’d be happy to store money with “Rose Banking Group”, but how about putting your savings into “Bank of Clowns”?

When, Johnson and Johnson revealed the new name for their consumer health company (with brands like Band-Aid, Listerine and Neutrogena); Kenvue. Which at first sight feels like a TV channel for Kenwood mixers.

The public health team at Derbyshire Council were looking for a new brand for a whole school approach programme for drug and alcohol prevention, including a name.

I facilitated a series of collaborative brand naming exercises that enabled us to explore how to meet their ultimate goal of improving drug and alcohol education in schools.

This process explores and develops names from a wide range of sources and voices, alongside my own, before refining, testing and selecting a final name.

The Coriell Award was chosen. Coriell is an abstraction of the Celtic name “Corieltauvi”, a tribe living in Britain before the Roman conquest in the midlands of England.

The Corieltauvi contained many separate tribes of people who worked together. This fitted wonderfully with the whole school nature of the project. Whilst the local link was appreciated by the team, it isn’t restricting should there be an opportunity to expand the award.

Once the name was set, it also influenced the visual design of the brand, leading to an award figurehead that took some queues from Celtic coins.