Things to Know About Property Naming for 2022
The signs are clear for the real estate market to break from marketing as usual, and to take much bolder action for property marketing in 2022. Naming will be a key battleground, so here’s what you need to know:
Is naming hard?
We’re not exaggerating when we say naming is hard and gets harder every year, simply because of the sheer and growing number of trademarked names at the US Patent and Trademark Office. (Naming a property is hard, but naming a company is even harder, since trademarking is sought for national or even international protection.)
What’s the benefit of a new name?
Properties and entities are always given a ‘working name,’ which is determined without much fuss and is usually functional and accessible. For example buildings are most often named for a street or an address. That’s for good reason since, as the axiom about location goes, it’s everything. To wit, 75% of office buildings in NYC are addresses.
However, there is opportunity for a word name to far better express a distinctive, stand-out property story that creates a memorable impression in the market. A distinctive name has the potential to create value on more levels than just the location address, particularly if the location is already well-known and the new project is simply the next new or renewed property in the area.
Names can also associate ownership with a portfolio in an asset category, such as life sciences or sustainable construction. Further, naming can indicate that ownership holds a portfolio of properties across different markets. These ideas can be incorporated as extensions of the name, more on that below.
Of course property naming that is given over to the anchor tenant trumps all, since selling the naming rights means revenue for owners. And the benefit reciprocal: a strong company brand confers value and status on a property. We’re not debating the value. If that’s the case for your property you can stop reading now. However, after a property changes anchor tenant names a few times, the market becomes confused about the identity of the building and the ownership brand is left out altogether.
How can the naming process accurately include the property promise?
Naming is best when set up as a process that includes participation of owners, leasing brokers and other stakeholders in the marketing branding and leasing effort. We developed The Torque Ideal State Workshop to bring together stakeholders to chart the roadmap towards the future vision of the property by identifying the current and core aspirational value promise of the property.
What are the categories of names to consider?
Descriptive words: many clients want a descriptive word or phrase name that makes it immediately clear what the property offers or what the business does. That is an appealing idea to make sales easier, but it’s an uphill battle from a trademarking standpoint, since the vast majority of descriptive plain english and words in many other languages are already trademarked.
One way to use a descriptive word is to add a second or third word, turning it into a short phrase, but the tradeoff here is that it’s longer and therefore more difficult to use in marketing, sales and day-to-day business. By the way, we’re in favor of phrases; they can offer more distinctiveness and also be more memorable. Examples in construction are Gilbane Building Company (note the use of ‘building’ not ‘construction’ for a different twist) and PCL Construction Enterprises.
Combination words: we sometimes call these “mashup” names because they’re developed by combining portions of words like FedEx (Federal Express). The only limit here is your imagination.
Metaphors are words that are symbolic of a quality. Amazon uses the name of a great river to stand for the wide delta of all the products sold through the online retail store. Fun fact: yes Amazon started as an online bookseller, but that was a business model proof of concept, since the online retailer had always planned to sell products in virtually every category.
Invented words: These are names that have no basis in language, and may be two or three syllables that hint at familiar words. Pharmaceutical companies are prolific in this category, with such market leaders as Prilosec (stomach acid inhibitor), Lipitor (a statin) and Lunesta (sleep)
Short: Shorter names are easier to say, spell and design into a logo mark. However, trademarking is difficult: the vast majority of short words are already trademarked, even abstract metaphors and random invented words.
Will a creative office property name seem like a residential property?
Names evolve and today there is a lot of incentive to open up to creative names for office properties. It used to be in vogue to name residential properties with formal British names. Today multifamily properties look for evocative names, like Aqua at Lakeshore East, Imprint, or suggestive of some historic or geographic reference like Burnham Point. But with the dramatic rise of amenities, activation and service experiences in office buildings, expressive and evocative names are a natural format for expressing those tenant benefits. Times change: be bold, be current!
Can we get the URL?
Direct word .com URLs are even harder to get than names because they are absolute, meaning that, unlike trademarking, name confusion doesn’t matter; if the URL is taken, that’s it. Also, the finite amount of website URLs are being used up. Three letter .com domains (URL website addresses) are highly coveted worldwide (Also referred to as LLL . com domains) Here’s an article describing the situation with scarce LLL .com domains.
However, there are ways to combine names with descriptions to enhance the meaning of the name. And although this adds letters to make the name longer, remember that most website traffic starts with clicking a link vs typing addresses into the browser. The same goes for email addresses, which are searched and clicked in address books.
How many website visits start when browsers type the URL vs clicking a link? Google Analytics defines “direct” traffic as website visits that arrived on your site either by typing your website URL into a browser or through browser bookmarks. In reality, “direct” traffic often refers to repeat visitors. This is due to the browser address bar auto-fill function, which further supports the idea that very few users are typing URLs into browsers.
If you are willing to go beyond the .com domain extension, new domain extensions are frequently being added to an already long list that includes .apartments; .business; boutique; .center; .energy; .science; .tech; .zone and many more. Here is a Complete list of Domain Name Extensions.
It reminds me of a product, another name in a different category, or something else.
Don’t limit your evaluation of a potential name to your personal reactions. Naming is a vessel for organizations to transform into a brand, and to fill with their own meaning and value. In addition to your reactions, also consider how other people, especially stakeholders will perceive the name.
It’s hard to pronounce, will that confuse people?
During the naming process we draw from other languages as well as corrupting spellings, replacing letters with numerals, and various other ways of generating different and distinctive names. Again, the most familiar and easily pronounced words are very frequently already trademarked. As with brand meaning, distinctive spelling needs to be communicated to the market, which is part of the investment in building awareness and visibility for the property. Examples of great brands in other industries that have difficult pronunciation include: Prius, Adidas, Hermes and Stella Artois. Unusual names lend a sense of pride to those “in the know” who can pronounce them properly.
Using taglines to describe the brand
A brand name does not have to live in a vacuum. Taglines and descriptor lines can be used to extend the value promise and be designed into the visual brand mark as well. Here are some examples:
De Beers, “A Diamond is Forever” Identifies a surname with a business in a particular industry.
Jackson Lewis, “All we do is Work” Cleverly shows the specialty of this employment and labor law firm.
Hentzen, “The formula for performance coatings,” Communicates the scientific approach this company uses to formulate and manufacture industrial coatings.
Trademarking
Although not required, we recommend that the trademarking process be handled by a good intellectual property lawyer. We can also recommend reputable resources like Rosenwein Law Group.
But even before involving lawyers, the naming team can get a good idea of name availability by using Google to see if the name is in use in marketing, and also USPTO.gov to see if it is trademarked. In general, when developing a name, be sure to:
Avoid words that are confusingly similar to an existing company in the same industry (although the Internet is breaking down geography and industry boundaries, making all uses of the name potentially confusing)
Avoid generic category words
Avoid famous company names
Generally, the more unique or distinctive the name is, the better. Fanciful marks like "Exxon", arbitrary marks like "Amazon" and suggestive marks like "Patagonia" are most likely to obtain a trademark.
What if we’re not sure we want to change the working name or existing name?
Given all of the cautionary advice above, as well as time, effort and financial investment, it may not be feasible to develop a creative name (or to replace either a working name or the property street-address-as-name). Not surprisingly, the naming process often comes full circle, returning to the address or intersection of the property. In support of that, Torque offers a Name Validation Process (NVP), which is a short evaluation that includes a market review and an assessment of the pros & cons of the naming process for the specific property (or company).
New names are opportunities to signal positive change to the market. It calls for an investment on many levels, from the time it takes, to new signage and marketing spend, but the signal can be a powerful support to the leasing process and the process of repositioning the asset.