Spread the Word!
Amplify Your Brand Image with Brand Extensions
Your parent brand name is only the beginning. When you have a stellar name, it will lend itself to brand extensions, carrying out a line extension and even defining a new product category.
You may know of the original brand name, The Baconator, Wendy’s iconic bacon cheeseburger, which was named by our founder, Alexandra. Even better than The Baconator, is the product name it spawned: Son of Baconator.
Creating brand awareness is more effective when you extend the theme of your business name under the umbrella of your established brand into various new areas of opportunity.
Stretching the mileage of your core brand name will increase its ability to reach a wider audience, create more long-lasting impressions, increase brand awareness and build brand loyalty.
Brand Stretching Begins With a Name With Legs
To get the most out of your name, give it “legs.” A name with a theme will lend itself to wordplay, letting you get more mileage out of it. Names with legs provide endless “verbal branding” opportunities. A strong theme can be extended to many elements of a brand: taglines, slogans, blog titles, newsletters, wireless networks, guest passwords, tradeshow themes, promo codes, hashtags, promotional items, company awards, and of course domain names.
Brand extension strategy relies on the verbal much more than the visual.
Our brand extension strategies involve all the verbal elements of brand positioning, including dynamic messaging for slogans and taglines, creative and compelling names for all service and product categories (new categories and old), and positioning messages to cement your verbal brand identity.
Through effective naming and establishing your verbal identity, the scope and reach of your new brand will be stretched to its fullest capabilities of success.
Our Brand Extension Strategy
Our brand extension capabilities double down on extending the theme of your existing brand name in any and all ways you can think of: newsletter headlines, blogs, job titles, conference rooms, social media handles, wireless networks, cafeterias, employee awards… the list can go on.
Many of our clients choose to be clever with their brand name stretching. An excellent example is public relations pro Lynette Hoy. Lynette is a fiery woman who isn’t afraid to pick up the phone and pitch the press. When we met her, she was using her personal name as her business name: Lynette Hoy PR. But the name didn’t evoke anything about her high-energy personality. We rebranded her business with a name that said it all..
The tagline we created for Firetalker PR, spoke volumes: Hot on the press.
Lynette took it from there, creating a firestorm of branding ideas.
Her Title: Fire Chief
Office HQ: The Firehouse
Service Packages: Fire Starter, Fan the Flame of Success, and Ignite Your Visibility.
Lynette lightly peppers her marketing materials with her theme, keeping it fresh and fun but not cutesy, corny, or over the top. The ringtone on her phone is the classic R&B funk song “Fire,” by the Ohio Players, which she cranks up during her speaking engagements to “fire up” the audience.
What’s your theme song?
Meaty Themes are the Key to Successful Brand Extensions
If you want to really stretch your name for miles, find a theme that can be stretched like carnival taffy. In addition to fire, lucrative themes with endless wordplay include magic, music, travel, nature, romance, and art.
The theme of food is also highly extendable, as we’ve discovered at Eat My Words. Here’s just a “taste” of how we’ve stretched our theme like carnival taffy:
Service packages: Key Ingredients, Supermarket Special, and The Whole Enchilada
Blog: The Kitchen Sink
Newsletter: Juicy News
Email: hungry@eatmywords.com
Theme song: Sugar, Sugar by The Archies
We’ve also extended our brand with the food-related swag we give away. This includes licorice twist pens, toast coasters, pink fridge mint tins, and “Food for Thought” notepads.
Bad Brand Extensions
Unsuccessful brand extensions can happen if you’re not careful or you try to force playing off their name.
For instance, Noom is a silly name for a weight-loss app. The company sprinkles equally ridiculous words throughout its otherwise charming copy. Some we find particularly cringey are Noomtastic, Noomily (family), and Noomers. A fun play on the word would have been Noomaste, like namaste, a word many of its millennial users would know from yoga. That wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch
