In the Product Naming Sweepstakes, Here Are Some Big Winners (page 1 of 2)

But in his new book, Wordcraft: The Art of Turning Little Words into Big Business, author Alex Frankel doesn't hesitate to claim that the BlackBerry name - the "best choice" - definitely improved the product's acceptance and sales.

Frankel is an unabashed fan of successful brand names. "To me a brand is everything," he writes. In Wordcraft, he offers "an overview of naming things today" mainly by telling the stories of five successful efforts: BlackBerry, Porsche's Cayenne, Viagra, Accenture, and IBM's use of the term "e-business." BlackBerry and Cayenne, according to Frankel, are examples of using known words for a new product. Accenture and Viagra are examples of inventing a name. IBM's "e-business" is an example of how a term that is not a brand or trademark can be used to enhance a company's image.

Professional consultants are involved in creating four of the five examples - or, maybe five, but Porsche wouldn't tell Frankel whether it had outside help when the company known only for sports cars made the decision to produce an SUV and name it Cayenne.

Accenture, the name picked to rebrand Arthur Andersen Consulting, came about after an intra-partner lawsuit that made a name change mandatory. Frankel explains that a schism had been growing for years between the traditional auditors at Arthur Andersen and its newer, more profitable, consulting division. The court ruled that the company was to be divided into two separate firms, with the auditors to keep the Arthur Andersen name and the consulting division to come up with a new ID in 147 days.

To do this, Andersen Consulting hired Landor Associates, a professional naming organization, and also asked for suggestions from its employees. Frankel says 3,000 names were generated by Landor and another 2,600 by employees around the world. Landor whittled the list down to 30 choices that were voted on by the firm's 1,250 partners. The winning moniker was contributed by Kim Peterson, a Danish employee, who e-mailed that he drew his inspiration from the thought: "accent on the future."

The name caught on with clients, says Frankel. And just in time, too. Andersen Consulting had already become Accenture in January 2001, when Arthur Andersen accountants got caught shredding paper at Enron. Thus, Accenture was "able to sail free from the mess."

In telling the tale of how Viagra - the product and the name - came to be, Frankel notes that a new description of the condition Viagra addresses has been as important as the brand name. According to Frankel, it was the naming consulting firm Wood Worldwide and Pfizer marketers who decided that the problem was to be called "erectile dysfunction" rather than "impotence" (so unmanly).

Frankel praises IBM for "taking ownership" of the expression "e-business" to connote "the value customers derive from networked computing." IBM didn't invent the phrase and never tried to turn it into a brand or trademark. But by popularizing the phrase in its advertising, he says, IBM successfully impressed new IBM services in the public mind.

Yet if Word Craft is often fascinating, it's also sometimes frustrating. The writing is sometimes repetitious while Frankel ignores information that cries out to be revealed. He fails to explain, for example, why Accenture was accepted while the new name for Philip Morris - Altria - which was also produced by Landor Associates, has been a "notorious" failure.