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Mimishu1995's avatar

Is this kind of branding a thing in other countries too (details inside)

Asked by Mimishu1995 (23779points) January 22nd, 2021

I’ve noticed a very strange trend in product names in my country lately, particularly with products that are advertised online (Facebook, Youtube…). So basically a company would give their product a really catchy name that has little to do with its function, and no one could guess what the product is and what it does without looking at it and its description. As a real example: a product called “Key-chan”, which is a rubber keychain that has the shape of a cute character (“chan” being a wordplay of “chain”, and also a Japanese word for “little one”). Another example from the same company: Cyan Intelligence, which is a line of bag and pencil cases with cyan color (and “Intelligence” comes from some tagline on Facebook saying something like “the wise color of cyan”)

Those are the ones that I managed to guess the meaning based on their arbitrary references. It gets extremely confusing with names that have nothing to do with anything whatsoever. A case in point is the names of the service packages of a certain insurance company I talked about (“Confident Life package”, “Safe Life package”, “Optimistic Life package”) I couldn’t figure out which each package offered even after digging up their website. A more recent example is the names of some service packages of a beauty salon advertised on Facebook. They are called something like “Beauty package”, “Safety package”, “Money package”, “Wonderful package”... And as far as I can tell, the differences between all of them are the prices and the number of services offered. But how in the world can I know which one is which just by hearing their names?

I just don’t understand why this kind of branding is becoming so popular here. A name of a product should be something memorable, and people have to immediately know what the name is referred to and what the product does. Why go for something that only serves to confuse your customers?

And it seems to me that those kinds of names are used more by online businesses than traditional businesses (businesses that sell products advertised on TV and sold in physical stores). So maybe it has something to do with the Internet?

Is this a thing in where you live too?

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5 Answers

ragingloli's avatar

I think that is pretty common all over the world.
For example, the “Prinzenrolle” (prince’s roll), which is a tubular pack of cookies.
Or the “Fritzbox”. Which is a brand of modems.
Or LIDL. Guess what that is.

smudges's avatar

I wonder if it’s purposefully done to literally confuse the consumer – to make them look up the product. Then many would probably become interested and read more, and out of those, some would possibly make a purchase. Pathetic way to attract customers if that is indeed what the purpose is. But, as they say, bad publicity is better than no publicity.

Nomore_lockout's avatar

That’s the wonderful world of capitalism. All’s fair when it comes to making that moolah. As the Wise Guy said, “Buyer Beware!” And money grubbing is a world wide phenomena in our modern world. Unless you live in Amazonia or the depths of the Congolese rain forest.

Mimishu1995's avatar

@smudges so it’s like those clickbait videos whose thumbnails are just so outrageous you can’t help but click? Yeah that makes a lot of sense, and I believe that’s what’s going on here.

For the record, I did buy the Key-chan and the Cyan Intelligence pencil case. And they’re just… fine. They do what they are supposed to do, but they aren’t as good as the ads made them look like. And they’re incredibly overpriced. I think that further support the clickbait theory, getting cheap attention for something that doesn’t deserve it.

smudges's avatar

@Mimishu1995 Oh I hate those clickbait videos where you just have to look at it, and frequently, the original thumbnail isn’t even in the video! grrrrrrrr

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