Picking a Company Name and Brand Name - Part 4 - Silverback Apparel Inc.

Silverback Apparel Inc. <- Loves -> Google Adwords Logo

The Result

After much deliberation I have finally chosen a name . I am currently in the process of incorporating under the name Silverback Apparel Inc. in the State of New York. There are several factor that came into play for why I ended up with this name, but I will mostly attribute it to one of my favorite companies: Google. First off I was not looking for something that everyone liked. Vanilla is not my thing and so I wanted something that people either absolutely loved or hated. Silverback was exactly that. It was either the favorite, or the one that people did not like. It is important to differentiate yourself from your competitors in business and I know that Silverback is very unique in my product category. Especially after reading Seth Godin’s Purple Cow and his blog I really realized now that I made the right decision. He is a branding and marketing genius and has become known in the last 5 years as one of the most innovate and creative people in his industry. His books are a definite must for an budding entrepreneurs. I know that I have chosen well also, because every time I tell someone my corporation’s name they remember it. This will go a long way to saving me money, resources, and time which is going to be important during my future branding and marketing campaigns.

The Process

Referring to my previous posts I basically after polled about 50 people and ended up with this list (in order of polling results):

Rank Name What I personally though of these names
1 Vérité Liked but too boring.
2 Airis This was my second favorite but it does not stand out enough.
3 Airwear Something you would expect from Nike or Airwalk.
4 Nuair Nike thing again.
5 J Denis Too many designers use this sort of naming scheme.
6 Silverback Personal favorite because it speaks to me and my target market.

There was no conclusive winner when it came down to the results, although Vérité was liked by everyone. I intended on using the simply to create a shortlist of names and this is what I got. Once I had this short list it was time to figure out what was the best way to figure out what consumers would respond to the best. The best way that I believe that you can achieve this is by testing the names within the market, and that is what I did. By utilizing Google’s Adwords program I was able to put these 6 names through a campaign that included 27,918 impressions evenly distributed throughout the names. I ran the campaign for several days and low and behold I did have a conclusive answer: Airwear and Silverback. These two both out preformed the other names by such a wide margin that I did not even bother thinking about the other names again. This left me with having to decide between the two, and because of the uniqueness of Silverback and the ease of rememberance, this was a quick and painless decision. An there you have it! Google to the rescue once again. This is a tool that is in my opinion under utilized and I know that I will be using Adwords much more from now on.

Jonathan Ouellet’s Blog » Design Competition: $400+ at Stake said,

August 18, 2007 @ 6:27 pm

[…] my consumers pick the most successful design. As I did when picking my corporate name, I will use Google Adwords, Google Analytics, and Shopify (as recorded in my previous posts) to guide me to the best and most […]

salescrafter said,

August 20, 2007 @ 12:29 am

that’s a cool way deciding on logo.

is this a new business starting from scratch? or its a launch of new brand with existing business?

admin said,

August 20, 2007 @ 12:37 am

I am starting from scratch and I’m learning a lot as I go along. One of the reasons I have this blog is to document the process and the various branding/sales/marketing experiments that I will be undertaking. The one in this post is a perfect example of this.

Jonathan Ouellet’s Blog » Silverback Apparel Sitepoint.com Competition Termination and Success said,

August 31, 2007 @ 1:00 am

[…] and what better way to do this than through a good old fashion split test. In the same way I picked my company name, I will pick my logo. I know that whatever logo I do finally end up with will be the best because […]

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