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Deciphering The Indecipherable — The Dictionary of Branding
Welcome to the Scarcliff | Salvador Dictionary of Branding, the
most comprehensive glossary of branding and naming on the Web. Our
goal is to produce and maintain an up-to-date record of the terms
of art in use in our field, including the latest branding concepts,
naming styles and techniques, tagline types, and commercially-useful
linguistics terms.
Each entry is cross-referenced if appropriate and includes examples
from the marketplace wherever possible. Please contact us with your
suggested additions and corrections.
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Iatronym (naming, verbal branding)
Any medical, healthcare, or pharmaceutical name. [Greek iatros ‘physician’
+ onuma ‘name’]
Iconicity (design, visual branding, verbal branding, )
The likelihood that a given brand name will be readily visualized
by its intended audience. The name of the computer company Apple
lends itself to easy iconicity.
Imperative Sentence (naming, verbal branding)
Any brand name which is a complete call to action, often marked
with an exclamation point. Microsoft Picture It! personal
imaging software is an example of an imperative sentence.
Initialism (naming, verbal branding)
Any name formed from first letter or letters of the words in a phrase
(IRS, the Internal Revenue Service), the syllables or components
of one word (TNT, trinitrotoluene), or a combination of words and
syllables (ESP, extrasensory perception) and usually pronounced
by spelling out the letters one by one. The few advantages of a
commercial acronym are that it may challenge the consumer to ‘solve
the puzzle’, as if it were a vanity license plate (TCBY,
The Country's Best Yogurt), or else present the consumer with a
prefabricated bit of upscale slang (DKNY, Donna Karan New
York and MGD, Miller Genuine Draft). The chief disadvantage
of an initialism is that it may be unintelligible and forgettable
without a prohibitive investment in advertising. It took James Earl
Jones to make “This is CNN” a meaningful phrase.
Compare Acronym.
Ingredient Brand (branding, marketing)
Any brand, typically owned by another company, which is promoted
as a key element of a host brand. The “Intel Inside”
campaign is a good example of ingredient branding. Compare Host
Brand.
Interrogatory Sentence (naming, verbal branding)
Any brand name composed of a complete question. An interrogatory
sentence is designed to engage the consumer by encouraging him or
her to answer the question the name poses. Where In The World
Is Carmen Sandiego? educational software is a perfect example
of this approach.
Invented Name (naming, verbal branding)
Any brand name which did not exist in the lexicon prior to its creation.
Kodak and Oreo are the prime examples of invented
names. Compare Fanciful Name and Coined Name.
Invented Spelling (naming, verbal branding)
The use of non-standard spelling to achieve a desired effect or
to otherwise distinguish a name. Cingular, for example, is
an intentionally altered spelling of the word ‘singular’.
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