Tyra Banks Has A Strange Naming Strategy

In the 1967 song titled “People Are Strange,” vocalist Jim Morrison of The Doors sang “No one remembers your name when you’re strange.”  The opposite may be true when it comes to branding. In 2013 David Colman wrote an article in the New York Times titled “No One Forgets a Name When It’s Strange.”

Apparently, Tyra Banks agrees. Last month, she introduced something she called “Hot Ice Cream” as part of a new venture in Australia.

One of the first rules of naming is to make the name memorable. Strange is not always memorable. Consider the fashion designer Natsuko Kanno’s clothing line, which is called “4 Corners of a Circle.”  It is only memorable, it seems, for being hard to remember.  Publicist Erica Roseman says nearly everyone–even those who work on the line– messed it up. “It was ‘4 Circles in a Square,’ ‘4 Corners of a City.’ No one ever got it right.”

Jean Godfrey June, the former beauty and fashion news director at Lucky, thinks the trend in quirky names can be a mixed blessing.  “It goes one way or the other, they charm or they repel … The offbeat name is a way to distinguish yourself and sound mysterious and underground-y. The trade-off is, purposely making yourself sound obscure can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

When you use unexpected names, you create a “mind puzzle” with your branding. With strange names, the customer will have to find a way to make the connection to the product and will spend time trying to figure out why the name was chosen, which can lead to higher recall of the name later and positive attributions to the product. If you use a slightly ambiguous name, the consumer might actually enjoy the “mind puzzle” and won’t have to work too hard to get your point. When consumers solve the puzzle, they will then have a sense of accomplishment because they were able to figure it out.

The lesson here is that strange is not necessarily a good or a bad thing, but what is important is how the target customer relates to the name and the product itself. Strange for the sake of strange means little on its own, but if the name makes the target customer curious about a product and willing to investigate it further, then strange can be good. In the case of Hot Ice Cream, the strangeness got many people to try the product, but as noted in the New York Times article, the name was not really descriptive of the product experience.

The use of ambiguous names is a strategy that challenges people to think about your product and to have its name on their minds. This can often lead to a stronger response from the customer when the connections are made with the name of your company or product. Don’t assume that strange is necessarily good or bad but do ensure that your branding is focused on your target consumer and is aligned with your product experience.