Intro
Intro
Intro
Intro
Intro
Intro

Getbrand is a branding agency

that allows manufacturers to increase the purchase frequency of their product at the point of sale so that they can increase their gross revenue, market share, and rate of return on investment

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15+ years

On the market

In the TOP 10

Of the branding services market

№ 3

The best of the best

2125+

Completed projects

375+

Clients



NAMING

Naming is a process of a brand name creation. This is a very artistic and a very complex process. In this article, we will tell you in detail about the main stages of the provision of naming services and about the pitfalls that await you along the way.

So, how do you come up with a name for your company, shop, cafe, or product brand? Can you just take a piece of paper, write down any possible names, and then choose the best one?

I’m afraid it's not that simple. With this approach, doubts will quickly overcome you. What is the best name? Do I like both? Have I heard this one somewhere? This name seems OK, but not WOW. Friends criticized the options I came up with, but what they offered me somehow didn’t work. What is to be done? The majority of entrepreneurs come to us with similar questions, often exhausted by their own creativity and research.

First difficulties

The first difficulty: let's reveal a secret – nothing excellent, good, beautiful, or creative exists in nature on its own. It becomes such when you yourself believe in it 100%. And for this to happen, you need to start thinking about the name a little earlier – from the idea, the concept of your brand. As soon as you articulate the value of your business, meaning, idea, positioning, some of the questions about the name will disappear by themselves, and you will clearly see a direction, like a ray of light, showing you the way. Over many years of experience, we have helped many Russian entrepreneurs and multinational companies to develop names for their brands, working in this sequence.

Naming development begins only after understanding the marketing strategy, mission, and values of the company. Without these components, it will not be possible to come up with a name that the creator of the business or product and then everyone else would believe in. If you are faced with such a task, turn to professionals, and preferably to market leaders.

There is another difficulty that could be encountered on the path of faith. Faith in the future name.

The names that are offered to you have not yet become brands. None of them is the name of a billion-dollar company; none of them is the name of the product brand that is on the shelves in every supermarket and in our refrigerators; none of it is the name of a restaurant that you can't go to without booking a table in advance. So far, these are just names that no one knows yet. And most people begin to criticize them, not seeing much potential in them. They are like rough diamonds, which do not sparkle with their dazzling light yet. We haven’t reached the cut stage, but we have to choose now.

To overcome this difficulty and present the names of the future brand to our customers in the best possible way, we visualize them by creating prototypes of logos with corporate identity elements, packaging design that is already on store shelves, signs of entrance groups, as if the brand already exists. Additional customer’s phrases, mentioning the brand name, help us imagine the future for the new brand and help the client to make their best choice, i.e.: “Darling, book a table at NAME”; “And don’t forget to buy NAME”; “We have been working with NAME for 10 years”.

STAGES OF CREATING A BRAND NAME

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Creating a technical requirement for a brand name development
Before you create something, you need to come up with a technical requirement (a brief). We don’t ask our clients to fill in a brief – we have realized that it is a tiresome and unfair task for them; if they pay us money for this service, they deserve exceptional treatment. On the basis of the interview with the client that we conduct before starting the development, as well as on the basis of the positioning foundation developed for the client at the previous stages, we draw up a technical requirement for the development in which we describe all the main meanings of the brand and its key value. This requirement will become a document for developers, according to which they will understand in what direction they should think, which names correspond to the positioning and brief conditions, and which ones don’t. A well-drafted brief equals 80% of development success.
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Creating a brand name
There are several important criteria for when a group of developers (namers, copywriters) works on a brand name. The main criterion for the future brand name is positioning compliance, expression of the key meaning of brand value or association with it. For example, if you open a chain of French bakery coffee shops, then Italian names are more than likely not going to suit you. As for associations, in this case, the brand name should be warm, sincere, pleasing to the ear, short, refined, in the French way. For example, Offre. Upon hearing it, a classic coffee shop and a sign with a logo in Art Nouveau font immediately come to mind.

Creative work is only a part of the naming development process. Each name presented to the client must be potentially subject to registration with Rospatent, and therefore not similar to other existing brands. At this stage, the namers and copywriters jot down as many name ideas as possible because not all of them will be able to pass the initial patent check for registered trademarks. Usually, we create about twenty potential names, and after the initial check, about ten potentially suitable names are left. Four names that the development team believes in are presented to the client with the elements of logo visualization, corporate identity or packaging design, as well as auditory consumer phrases that include the name of the future brand. Other naming options are presented as a list.
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Patent examination of naming in Russia
At the naming stage, it is important to develop and present a client with a name that not only meets a technical requirement (a brief) in terms of its verbal and phonetic properties, but can be also patented with FIPS, according to the corresponding class of the Nice Classification. Otherwise, all this work doesn’t make any sense if we are talking about the brand as the future asset of the company. Today, successful brands are worth more than a modern factory, as they are the object of consumer love and people’s desire to buy them.

For reference, look at the value of the brands in The Best Global Brandsranking, conducted by Interbrand every year. The value of the brands themselves exceeds the value of real estate and production facilities. Brands can be bought and sold like a factory or a building. A brand as a property or an intangible asset of a company is protected by law only when you have a certificate of registration for you as an individual entrepreneur or for your company with Rospatent and the Federal Institute of Industrial Property (FIPS), which is responsible for registering names as trademarks in Russia.
There are 45 classes of the Nice Classification (International Classification of Goods and Services). All categories of products and services are divided into categories as in the catalog. You can check it out here.

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Patent attorneys – these are the specialists who evaluate and check the names for patent purity, as well as register trademarks, and work with FIPS databases. The database of already registered trademarks is in the public domain, and the database of filed applications for registration of trademarks has restricted access. Officially, access to this database can be obtained by paying the state fee. We strongly recommend that you conduct additional verification of names against the database of submitted applications. The fact is that registration is a lengthy process. It takes from 12 to 18 months from filing an application to obtaining a patent under the FIPS regulations. The rule of precedence is also applied. It means that if someone submits a name similar to yours before you, they will receive a certificate of registration as a trademark, and you will be refused. These are the rules. Now imagine that you have already made products under this brand, and you have been denied registration. Federal chains won’t take the goods for sale because they don’t want to take risks for selling an illegal brand that directly violates the rights of third parties. And in this case, a lawsuit from the copyright holders can amount to 5 000 000 roubles. So you decide whether it is worth saving on checks and on the services of patent attorneys.


If you entrust us with the registration of a name potentially subject to copyright and developed by us as a trademark, then our patent attorneys will conduct an official peer review of a closed database of submitted applications for trademark registration. This is included in our package for registering a brand name with FIPS. This package also includes a professional filing of an application for registration of a name as a trademark, correspondence with FIPS experts, obtaining all necessary documents to complete the application, obtaining a Certificate of Registration in your name, courier delivery of the certificate to your office, and payment of all necessary state fees.

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Is it possible to register a name on your own, without the services of agencies or patent attorneys? Yes, but with a loss of time, nerves, and even money. There is always a chance that your competitors, using the services of experts, will register your name or something similar to it earlier. And then what? Are we starting over?

Having a Certificate of registration of the name as a trademark will provide you and your company with:
  • the proof that your brand will be unique;
  • the ownership of an intangible asset that you can sell or lease;
  • the copyright protection; you can always hold the perpetrators accountable and collect a fine of up to 5 000 000 roubles from them.

So is it worth skimping on the development and registration of a brand name?
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Trademark registration certificate
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THREE REASONS TO WORK ON NAMING WITH US

We have created more than 60 brand names and they have already become federal brands

We always offer only verified brand names to choose from

If we are unable to register the brand name we proposed by using all means, we will refund the money!*
* if you ordered the name registration service in Rospatent in our agency.
if you ordered the name registration service in Rospatent in our agency.

NAMING COST

Naming is not a cheap service; and every year its price only increases despite any crises. See for yourself, thousands of trademarks are registered in Russia every year; and over the 30 years of capitalism in the new Russia, more than a million of them have been registered; and their number is growing every year. If you want to register a simple one-word name such as Happiness or Care, you won't be able to do so as those names are already taken. Even combinations of such popular words are already taken in many classes. Therefore, every year it becomes more and more difficult for developers to find new, bright, and working names that would be universal, corresponding to the essence of the brand, and at the same time potentially patentable. On the other hand, business representatives are beginning to understand the value of this work better and better. Big risks can arise at this stage if it is approached with the wrong outlook. The low cost of work can result in the fact that developers would skimp on the client at some point; and the latter may be denied registration. And it is not only the time and money spent on development that are at stake. There may be a release of goods with a name that has not been registered, and it can result in a disruption in the supply to federal chains, and this is much more serious. Large companies prefer not to be stingy, as investments in creating a name for a future brand pay off in the first months.

In 2012, the Selo Zelenoe dairy products brand for which we developed the name, logo, and packaging design, earned 550 million roubles in gross revenue. In 2020, this brand already had a revenue of 13.7 billion roubles, having entered other product categories. In 2017, the EPICA yogurt brand for which we also developed the name and design, earned 1.5 billion roubles for Ehrmann in Russia in the first year after its launch. Is it worth saving in this case? It's easier to do everything right. As you can see, a sustainable business is able to create a professional naming.

What can those who are only at the beginning of their journey as entrepreneurs do? They can come up with a name themselves and even conduct an express check using one of the name checking services that you can find on the Internet. If all is well, then hire a patent office to register the name. If the muse didn’t come to you, take your own name as the brand name. Many successful companies have the names of their founders: Ford, Ogilvy, McKinsey, Tinkoff, Dymov, etc. If you are a cocky startup with ambitions, then come up with a name for yourself, as I did at the beginning of my business journey. Good luck with your business!

Name development

20 names that have passed the initial check in one of the classes of the Nice Classification

600 000 roubles

Registration of the selected name with Rospatent

full check of applications + filing an application + obtaining a patent; includes all state fees

220 000 roubles

Naming project roadmap

As mentioned above, the process of name development should only be started when you can clearly articulate the idea of your brand, its positioning, as well as the communication model of interaction with your buyers, whom, along with their desires and problems standing in their way, you can also picture well. If you have already gone through with all this and you have a sustainable idea about it, you can start from the fifth stage.

The main stages of creating a company’s brand are:

1

Conducting a situational analysis.

At this stage, the team of our expert developers needs to dive into our client's business, possibly conducting the necessary research and reviewing the client's current research, if they have any. They have to understand its basis, main competitors, its customers and their main problems.

The purpose of the stage: to dive into the nuances of the client's business, understanding of their customer, and studying the offers of their competitors.

Essential specialists (3 employees): project manager, a group of brand strategists.

2

Developing positioning hypotheses. 

On the basis of the information received, at this stage, we offer positioning hypothesis options; a presentation of value options for the future brand, consisting of a description of the buyer’s basic problems depending on the buyer’s worldview; a presentation of solutions to the described problems with evidence-based ways to solve them that are possible for our client – RTB (reasons to believe – reasons to believe that the client will be able to solve the problem).

The purpose of the stage: to choose one positioning hypothesis for the further development of the brand.

Essential specialists (3 employees): project manager, a group of brand strategists.

3

Developing a brand platform.

We elaborate the chosen positioning hypothesis into a brand platform, developing a classic brand pyramid, describing all its components from attributes to benefits (rational and emotional), to values, to the character of the brand, to the essence of the brand, and we also formulate the mission and role of the company's brand.

The purpose of the stageto develop a brand platform document that fully describes the positioning of the company's brand and defines its key value.

Essential specialists (3 employees): project manager, a group of brand strategists.

4

Developing a brand communication strategy.

On the basis of the brand platform developed in the previous stage, we will draw up a brand promotion strategy and a promotion story – storytelling, identify contacts and main points of contact with the buyer.

The purpose of the stageto develop a brand communication strategy document so that all parties understand the communication model and the plan for further promotion. And also to develop a technical requirement (a brief) for creating a company’s brand name (if necessary).

Essential specialists (3 employees): project manager, a group of brand strategists.

An alternative – "team" – approach.

With this approach, we will go through the first four stages in our Vysota Workshop with your team of line managers in just 2 days and with complete immersion of your employees in the world of your buyer.

The purpose of the Vysota Workshop is to create company positioning, determine the key business value for your customer, develop new ideas for a product and communication with customers, create a brand’s main communication legend, a brand role, a brand mission, and express the essence of the brand in one sentence (slogan) together with a cross-functional team of our client for effective subsequent management of a brand and key employees of a company.

Read more about it here

Essential specialists (4 employees): project manager, a group of brand strategists; the Vysota Workshop is led by Andrey Gornov, CEO of Getbrand.

5

Creating a name of a corporate brand.

At this stage, we offer name options that correspond to a technical requirement for development. In the first submission, we present 20 names that have been run through the database of registered trademarks for the relevant class of the Nice Classification. If this is not enough, we will present 10 more names.

The purpose of the stage: to choose one name for the subsequent registration with Rospatent.

Essential specialists (4 employees): project manager, naming copywriter, brand strategist, patent attorney.

6

Registering a name with Rospatent.

At this stage, before submitting an application for registration, we will conduct an even deeper check of the selected name in the closed FIPS database of submitted trademark applications. If we don’t see any resemblance with other applications, we will immediately file an application for registration with Rospatent on your behalf.

The purpose of the stage: to apply for registration with Rospatent and obtain a trademark registration certificate with FIPS.

Essential specialists (3 employees): project manager, patent attorney, brand strategist.

Would you like us to help 

develop a name for your brand?
fill out the form and our experts 

will contact you within an hour.

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