Defining your brand name is a critical step towards your success in China. Your name is often the first contact between your brand and your target audience. It is crucial to determine which message and emotions you want to convey in priority. This can be your values, your origin, your brand promise and more.
Chinese is a complex language and you need to rely on experts to determine your brand or product name. It has thousands of characters – with sometimes one character conveying different meanings – and a multitude of dialects.
WHAT IS A GOOD CHINESE NAME?
- Descriptive: it helps consumers understand the brand’s core message
- Memorable: it conveys a specific feeling that triggers interest and curiosity about your brand
- Distinctive: it makes your brand stand out from the competition
- Visually and phonetically appealing
- Consistent with your brand identity
OUR METHODOLOGY
Designing the perfect Chinese name for your brand must follow a sound and pragmatic process that Doxaganda provides you. Our recommendations are always supported by quantitative and qualitative data and tested on your target consumers to make sure we recommend you the most relevant name for your brand. Our naming experts will assist you in defining your Chinese brand name through the following steps:
1. Client workshop
Our team organizes a workshop with the client’s team to better understand your brand, its history, its values and the core message that it intends to convey to its target audience.
2. Creative brief
Based on the information that you shared with us, our team will write a creative brief to clearly determine the directions that the naming process should focus on.
3. Keywords generation
Based on the creative brief, our Chinese language experts will brainstorm and identify the most relevant characters, words and sentences describing your identity. This first material will be classified and scored according to the below criteria:
- Convey the client’s brand positioning in China
- Convey your brand identity
- Easy to pronounce in Chinese
- Phonetic similarity to your original brand name
- Easy to remember for Chinese consumers
4. Final name shortlist and scoring
The final step consists in shortlisting our naming recommendations. We deliver a comprehensive report featuring the shortlisted names, the meaning they convey, their availability on the market, and their potential limitations. Due to the complexity of the Chinese language, our team also proceed to a name verification in the main Chinese dialects (ie. Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese), to make sure there the name does not convey a negative meaning in any of these dialects.
5. Legal check and website domain name
The legal check is a crucial step for safety of trademark registration in China. Our team will therefore conduct a thorough verification with the help of the CHINA TRADEMARK OFFICE (CMTO) database.
6. Name testing with the client’s end-consumers
Doxaganda capitalizes on the market research expertise of its parent company Daxue Consulting to test the shortlisted names with your end-customers. It is based on market and consumer data that Doxaganda will help you identify the best name for your brand in China. This will help us narrow down the recommendations to one (or a few) names and can be done with the help of 2 methodologies:
- Focus groups: set-up a group of 6 to 8 participants (end-consumers or market insiders) to identify the different associations and emotions conveyed by different naming recommendations.
- Survey: identify with a poll composed of your end-consumers the statistical trends that will validate the best choice for your Chinese brand name.
CONTACT US TO SEE HOW DOXAGANDA CAN HELP YOU FIND YOUR CHINESE BRAND NAME