The 5 benefits of agency naming

1. With more than 10,000 brand names registered worldwide every day, developing a brand name requires a methodology that goes beyond simply providing a list of names or brainstorming.
2. The main advantage of working with a professional agency is that you receive a selection of potential names that are legally available—meaning they can be registered as trademarks***—thereby granting you exclusive use of your word mark within the desired product classes and markets.
3. A professional agency therefore incorporates a legal process into its methodology (see slide 3).
4. A professional agency will also verify the linguistic and semantic validity of your brand name in the target languages ​​and markets—ensuring, in other words, that the name carries no undesirable connotations in the languages ​​spoken across the target territories.
5. A naming agency integrates the expertise required to meet the four criteria for brand validity: marketing, linguistics, semantics, and legal.

Trademark registers

• Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property www.Ige.ch
• Swiss trademark register www.swissreg.ch
• International trademark register www.wipo.int

The 5 pitfalls to avoid

1. If the agency does not include equivalent legal checks as well as a minimum level of linguistic and semantic verification, they are not professionals, and you are wasting your time—and, above all, your money.
2. Ensure the agency is professional, employing creatives with a background in linguistics or languages, rather than graphic designers tasked with brainstorming names.
3. For an international brand, ensure the agency has a sufficient pool of naming creatives—a minimum of 500 name candidates is required to overcome legal hurdles, as only 10% will be eligible for registration by the end of the legal process.
4. Naming requires cross-disciplinary expertise in marketing, linguistics/languages, and intellectual property and trademark law—which justifies the high cost of developing a brand name.
5. The naming process requires criteria defined in a concept board prior to the creative phase, ensuring that name selection is not limited to individual “like/dislike” preferences, but is instead based on the team aligning around a shared ambition.

The brand development process

1. Concept board + International creation, 600 / 800 name variations
2. First selection within Admarka, First presentation to JTI – 60 names, First selection with client
3. Second creation – creation recentering, Legal check at the identical, Second presentation and selection with client
4. Final selection of 3-5 names, Full legal check, Linguistic & semantic checks
5. Name registration, Name argumentation, Name Design

Request a quote from a naming agency

To provide an accurate quote, the naming agency needs the following information:

• Description of the business activity or product categories involved
• Information on the target markets for the trademark application – whether it’s a national (Swiss), European, or international trademark
• Specification of the purpose of the brand name development – ​​whether it’s a brand for a product/service or a corporate brand

Indeed, the pool of potential trademark candidates is significantly larger for an international brand than for a national one, due to legal obstacles related to already registered trademarks. This process involvesplique encore si le noms de marque doit représenter une nom d’enetreprise lequel sera également enregistré au registre de commerce