The Naming Group Weighs in on Nokia’s Hardly New Naming Convention

With the release of their C5 phone, Nokia has officially announced a shift in their device naming convention today. In their official blog, Nokia Conversations, they explain:

“This new naming convention is designed to make things easier for users, so they can quickly and easily work out where a device sits within the series and beyond that have a clearer idea of what each series does. Nseries remains the flagship and most advanced range of products. Xseries comes next and focuses on social entertainment. Eseries remains focussed on productivity and business whilst Cseries represents the core range of products.”

Well for those of you who know my feelings on alphanumeric naming (if you don’t, check this out: http://tinyurl.com/tellushowyoureallyfeel), I apologize for sounding like a broken branding record, but creating brand naming conventions based on letter and number combinations is ineffective and forgettable. A product name is your opportunity to communicate so many things about the product itself and the parent brand it comes from. It is a chance to inspire feelings, thoughts and images, and at the very least to form an emotional connection with your consumer. For the majority of the population, excluding the few people who take joy and pride in staying abreast of technomenclature trends, combinations of numbers and letters as names simply don’t form this connection.

Let’s pit two cell phone names against each other. Which communicates more to you: C5 or Solstice? When I hear C5 I think of the letter C and the number five and my secondary thought is of a model of luxury car brand – though I can’t remember which one. When I hear Solstice (Samsung) I immediately have a mental image of an evening sky painted with rich violet hues.

Think about it, when you hear the name “C5” you have to think about what the C stands for and what the 5 stands for. Extra synapses have to fire and access the part of your brain that keeps track of Nokia’s naming convention (does your brain have that part established yet? Me neither.) to remember what the C means and then remember what the 5 means and separate it from the meanings of all of the other C’s and 9’s in your life. So, there is room for two kinds of confusion. There’s the possibility of internal confusion, within the Nokia brand architecture itself (“Wait, what’s the difference between C and E? What does C stand for again?”). Then there’s remembering where the C falls in the Nokia convention (below the E, X, and N series) while still keeping straight where the C falls within the Mercedes convention (above the A and B series but below the E, G, R, and S series).

Don’t forget about all the other kids on the block using alphanumeric naming. Lincoln uses alphanumerics (MKX, MKS, MKZ). A good bit of the LG televisions employ number/letter combos in place of word-based naming. While they may use slightly different combinations of numbers and letters, the idea is the same. There is no interest piqued, no positive mental image evoked. There are only overlapping piles of hackneyed, uninspired naming conventions. To come up with an innovative, daringly different system – even if it were a little strange, edgy or maybe even clever – would be better. In today’s marketplace you have to stand out to survive.