SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lexicon Branding, Inc., creator of the names BlackBerry, Scion, Pentium, and hundreds of other well-known brands, has just completed its latest study, which investigates ways that spelling contributes to a brand name’s character.
Lexicon’s findings defy the conventional wisdom that English spelling is arbitrary and chaotic. Certainly there is perplexity in how we spell the rhyming word pairs city and ditty, tryst and twist. But Lexicon’s study shows for the first time that some variations can actually be used to express differences systematically.
Over 500 respondents completed a test comparing pairs of fictitious brand names, each pair differing in one aspect of spelling – for example, a single vs. a double t somewhere in the name. The answers showed reliably that, among other things, products whose names had double letters tended significantly to be judged as having more features and capabilities. This means that people are likely to believe that a new smartphone called Zepp will have a more robust set of features than one called Zep.
Another clearly supported hypothesis was that the letter i is seen as more innovative than the letter y. For pairs of imagined brand names such as a new laptop called Novix or Novyx, people tended to believe that the version with i would be more innovative. Marketers of real world brands Pixar, Audi, Nvidia and Nivea should be happy to hear this result.
The results make sense given popular respellings like boyz, dawg, and kewl. Also, people tend to agree that that Google looks friendlier than Gugle. The oo – innocently repetitive, looking like an interjection, appearing in very common words – looks like fun, while u simply doesn’t.
The information Lexicon has uncovered is important to marketers and others involved in brand naming: the findings suggest simple ways to achieve maximum visibility and attention from consumers.
Recently the focus of a Fast Company article, “How to Pick the Perfect Name,” the naming specialists at Lexicon engage in highly evolved creative processes, and take into account academic and proprietary research about language. The present study follows up on fifteen years of research in sound symbolism at Lexicon, covering languages from across the globe. Lexicon’s understanding of how sounds convey meanings led to the creation of successful brands such as Dasani, Swiffer, and Febreze.
About Lexicon
Since 1982, Lexicon Branding has been successfully naming products, companies, services and experiences, across such disparate categories as automotive, food and beverage, telecommunications, personal care, biotechnology, and finance. Lexicon’s credentials include: OnStar, Swiffer, BlackBerry, Dasani, Embassy Suites, and Pentium.
Linguistic research at Lexicon Branding is conducted by a group that includes Founder and CEO David Placek, Professor Will Leben (Stanford), and in-house specialists with business and linguistic research backgrounds.