It’s well known that B2C companies expend considerable effort on branding and naming, both for new products and for the company overall. In my experience, however, B2B companies often consider branding and naming as relatively unimportant and fail to consider the strategic benefits from B2B branding and naming.
About two years ago, we had the opportunity to benchmark best practices in innovation for a leading automotive supplier. We developed the list of firms to study by asking the B2B customers which companies were doing a good job for them in partnering on innovation. We heard from engineers, who are recognized for their ‘rational’ approach to decision-making, that brand names are important and helpful in communicating with B2B customers. And, one of the firms that came up was Gentex, known for its innovation in mirrors.
Gentex is known for innovation. It was founded by Fred Bauer, an engineer, and currently holds over 700 patents. In the automotive segment, customers are large automotive OEMs such as Mercedes and BMW.
And part of Gentex’s success (along with the patents, sales and operational expertise) is effective B2B branding and naming. Instead of offering only products with names with no particular meaning (i.e., “the B Series”) or code names and numbers, the firm has leading product lines like “SmartBeam.” In fact, the SmartBeam name is so successful, that it is even used in consumer-facing communications.
As proponents of brand names that help to convey a product’s positioning and its benefit, we admire the name SmartBeam. Each time the name is used, it helps to reinforce that benefit, and we’ve taken this principle to heart at the B2B firm, Insight to Action.
B2B naming requires an investment, with trademark searches, board approvals, etc., but the effort is worth it, as customers, salespeople and possibly even consumers use these names constantly. So take a minute to reconsider whether your B2B brand name is working as hard as it could for your organization.
