“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

The Bard had some wisdom it’s clear. Were a “rose” called a “plinth”, it would be just as pretty and smell as sweet. Perhaps we’d have lots of babies called little Billy-Plinth.

Is it true therefore that it doesn’t matter what you call your brand, that if the product, service or values and culture that make up the brand are so great that it doesn’t matter what it’s called?

I imagine that you’d be happy to store your money with “The Rose Banking Group”, but how about putting your savings into “The Bank of Clowns”? I suspect not.

Last month, Johnson and Johnson revealed the new name for their consumer health company (that will have famous brands such as Band-Aid, Listerine and Neutrogena under it’s umbrella); Kenvue. Which at first sight feels like a TV channel for Kenwood mixer recipes.

The public health team at Derbyshire County Council were looking for a new brand for a whole school approach programme for drug and alcohol prevention, including a name.

Alongside their core team, I facilitated a series of collaborative brand naming exercises that enabled us to explore names that would meet their ultimate goal of improving drug and alcohol education in Derbyshire schools.

This process explores and develops names from a wide range of sources and voices, alongside my own, before refining, testing and selecting a final brand name.

The Coriell Award was chosen for many reasons.

Firstly Coriell was an abstraction of the Celtic name “Corieltauvi”, a tribe of people living in Britain before the Roman conquest and based across the East and East Midlands of England.

The Corieltauvi contained many separate tribes of people who worked together. This fitted wonderfully with the whole school nature of the project, where all school departments, levels of management and other stakeholders all work together on improving drug education in the school.

The word Coriell also had a gravitas that added a premium feel to the name, befitting a project that would carry an award-style accreditation.

Lastly whilst the local link to the region was appreciated by the team, it isn’t restricting should there be an opportunity to expand the award beyond Derbyshire. Had it been called after a local river, The Derwent Award, or a landmark such as The Peak Award, it would become something of a millstone to the brand.

Once the name was set, it also fed into the visual design of this new brand, leading to an award figurehead that took some queues from ancient Celtic coins.

Naming a brand can be both a lot of fun and a lot of hard work, facilitating brand naming is a greatly rewarding aspect of the type of consultation work I undertake.

Get in touch now if you’d like to work together on your brand name.