Shorter Names don’t get lost in Nothing But Initials hell

Just when I was thinking about publishing my annual diatribe about how long names so easily get abbreviated to initials, and then you are lost in the morass of nothing but initials that are so hard and expensive to brand, I came across this footer from the home page of RioGrande:

NBIFooter

RioGrande themselves would never think of watering down their brand to RGI say, but look at all their memberships and partners. Unless you are in their specific field I bet you haven’t a clue what these stand for, other than Verisign which you don’t have to decode.

Notice also that they are now a Berkshire Hathaway Company (Warren Buffet’s investment holding company). And long as the name is, no one even thinks of calling it BHC!

Abbreviations in names and logos are usually to fix problems with the original names. Initials are really hard to trademark and own as well. So don’t go there in the first place, and don’t allow anyone to abbreviate your trademark except lawyers in legal contracts.

(C) Copyright Brighter Naming ®

Posted in Branding, Domain Names, Naming News, Strange Names

Recent Naming Articles

Brand insider articles from an experienced marketing team.

Mar 2023: Pricing your naming project

Oct 2021: The devil is in the trademark details

Mar 2019:The Power and Value of a Trademark

Jan 2019:4 common branding mistakes

Oct 2018: You named it What?

Linked In

Share this page on LinkedIn:


See his industry naming commentary (where he takes a critical look at names) via the blog on this site