If you are launching or expanding your business into the Chinese market, a multilayered brand can be a key component to your success. A great brand name tells people what your company does and why you do it better than others. It tells a story about you that transforms your brand into a broader picture: the business, the product, the service, but first and foremost, the promise you make to your customers.
In the Chinese market, the many varied characters in the language make branding a challenge and an opportunity. Each character in the Chinese language has “multilayered” connotations. Even the slightest change in pronunciation can greatly alter the meaning of a word. Such a multilayered nature gives plenty of space for creativity (and constraints). In fact, multiple-meaning words can better convey brand values.
This code-breaking quality may be simple wordplay – for example, 51job.com, where in Chinese the “5” character sounds like “I” when pronounced, and the “1” character sounds like “want” – but also can integrate a poetic dimension into the brand. These brand names are “poetic” for their capacity to evoke an emotional response in consumers through the creative use of meaning, sound, context, images, or rhythmic language choices.
Chinese brand names that draw from this poetic-like dimension fall into three main categories:
1. Brand names sourcing directly from China’s historic literary tradition
In this category, Revlon provides a good example. Revlon’s Chinese brand name literally means “glimmering with the bright spring dew”; however, it is also a verse of a poem from Li Bai, a sixth-century Chinese poet regarded as one of the greatest poets in Chinese history.
The Li Bai poem used by Revlon is also an ode to the beauty of women. Therefore, the allusion to the poem combined with the image of bright spring dew glimmering in the sunlight creates a powerful brand name. Incidentally, the Chinese pronunciation of the brand is quite close to the English pronunciation of “Revlon.” The name is short and easy to pronounce, with a round sound that is very well-suited to represent the famous cosmetic brand across the country.
2. Twisted poetic brand names
OLAY’s brand promise is to give women the skin-care products, tools and advice to help them love their skin, and its Chinese brand uses the twisted poetic technique for multilayer resonance. The brand includes the character for jade, the gemstone traditionally used in Chinese to describe women’s natural beauty. The next character means “orchid” and represents the chasteness of a girl. These two Chinese characters have been used countless times in China’s literary history to compliment or refer to beautiful women. In addition, the two characters recall OLAY’s original name in terms of pronunciation, with a beautiful sound and multilayered meaning – a cream to make your skin soft (like an orchid) and smooth (like jade) – but also a promise of unchanging beauty. Both have helped raise the brand awareness domestically among Chinese consumers.
3. Nonconventional poetic brand names
Apple in Chinese follows the same lines of the original brand name: an apple – something that has nothing to do with PCs – to convey the creativity and uniqueness of a brand that has matched design, technology and originality in one branded concept.
Sprite in China has characters that mean snow and green/jade and also belongs in this category. The Chinese brand name does not communicate the product category of the brand or any of the functional attributes of the sparkling drink. Still, the characters combined evoke the idea of freshness, nature, and transform the brand into an abstract idea: pure as jade, cool and refreshing as snow. Sales skyrocketed in China after Sprite adopted this brand name.
Adapting Chinese poetic practices to fit your brand
So what makes for a great brand name, and when are poetic names the best choice? Your industry, first of all, plays a relevant role here. Some industries, like pharmaceutical, might prefer descriptive names, as these are best-suited to convey product attributes and brand reliability.
Secondly, the brand identity, values and tone combine to determine the name best-suited to represent a brand in China. Look at Baidu and Google. Both brands operate in the same industry, but Baidu’s poetic name conveys the brand identity while creating an emotional bond. On the flip side, Google’s poetic, traditional-feeling Chinese name has not been welcomed by Chinese consumers, because it does not exemplify Google’s creative, young, innovative brand identity.
The brand target market also plays an important role. What tugs your consumers’ heartstrings? What do they look for when they prefer a certain brand over another? A poetic name is definitely a good choice when it helps introduce a company to its customers, characterize it with the public, and differentiate its offerings from the competition. The most important advantage of poetic brand names is to create an emotional touch point with customers. It can provide your brand name with a set of associations and images that meets your customers’ needs and wants, giving your business a unique allure.
Vladimir Djurovic is founder of Labbrand, www.labbrand.com , a Shanghai-based innovative agency that blends branding with market research. By giving research a more important role, Labbrand has become an industry leader by applying a multi-disciplinary approach to brand building.
Tags: branding, Chinese market, literary history, market research