Brand Naming and Acronyms

An acronym is a pronounceable word formed from the initial letters of a name (WAC, for Women's Army Corps), or formed by combining the first parts of a series of words (RADAR, from Radio Detecting and Ranging).

As these examples suggest, once an acronym becomes embedded in the language, most people forget -- or never bother to learn -- the underlying words. Just ask someone what "laser" actually stands for. (Ready? It's "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.")

Naming a product or service with an acronym is like an Olympic diving competition. The best efforts carry a high degree of difficulty. First of all, to make the name pronounceable, you need some well-placed vowels. Examples: QANTAS, from Queensland and Northern Territories Air Service. NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization. INTERPOL, International Police Organization. GEICO, Government Employees Insurance Company. NABISCO, National Biscuit Company. (The "Co." abbreviation is easy to pronounce and combine, which accounts for its frequent role in acronyms). Without vowels, you just get an impenetrable jumble of letters. (MSDW for Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter).

Best of all, you'd like the word formed by the letters to have a strong meaning and an immediate relationship to the brand. That's a home run in acronyms. Examples: VISTA (Volunteers In Service to America), MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers), PLAY (Participate in the Lives of America's Youth).

Merge two organizations, and you can create collisions of initials that resemble car wrecks. But sometimes, you can hit that home run. Our favorite example was the merger of two big labor unions, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. The result could have been the mother of all jumbles: The ILGWACTWU.

But cooler heads prevailed. Their merged identity carries the dandy acronym UNITE: Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees.

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