Created through a merger of Franklin Quest and Covey Leadership in 1997, the Franklin Covey brand is well known for training and supporting organizational products, particularly in the corporate or business market. Product variety and distribution to multiple channels makes naming products a critical branding activity for Franklin Covey.
Owned and managed under several entities, the Franklin Covey brand’s products include the popular paper-based planners, app versions, and leadership training through SaaS subscription models, among other offerings.
Naming Products for Sale in Walmart and Other Retailers
In 2008, Franklin Covey leadership was charged with developing new, relevant paper product lines to present to key retail customers on a fast timeline. These key retailers included brands like Office Max, Walmart and Office Depot. The Franklin Covey leadership team identified four benefit domains, and defined an overall architecture.
Insight to Action’s challenge was to further define the new sub-brand names and to connect the sub-brands with the overall Franklin Covey brand in a meaningful way. Each new sub-brand’s job was to communicate the benefit area and to have high appeal for both consumers and retailers. The sub-brand also needed to be aligned with the overall Franklin Covey brand.
Process for Naming Products for Sub-Brands around Benefit Areas
The first step was reviewing the available background information on Franklin Covey and competitive brand products. With that completed, the second step was a benefit-focused ideation brainstorming session around the four benefit areas:
- Note Taking
- Calendaring
- Light Planning
- Time Management
In the third step, management screened the names from the ideation brainstorming session.
Names were screened on the following criteria:
- Convey the benefit
- Appealing
- Aligned with the Franklin Covey overall brand
- Legally available
- Pronounceable
Names that met these criteria were included in the next step, which was a quantitative consumer test of the candidate sub brand names. Coming out of the quantitative, finalist sub-brand names were recommended. Guidance was provided for the specific brand targets, benefits and look and feel for each.
Recommended Sub Brands Aligned to Benefit Areas
The four sub-brands were:
- Noteworthy (for Note Taking)
- Date Manager (for Calendaring)
- Easy Plan (for Light Planning)
- Master Plan (for Time Management)
Each of these sub brands also had a subtitle that clarified the context.
- Franklin Covey Noteworthy
- Thoughts and highlights
- Franklin Covey Date Manager
- Event and appointment management
- Franklin Covey Easy Plan
- Streamlined organizing
- Franklin Covey Master Plan
- Goal-focused time management
Naming Products with Instore Plan
Clear sub-brand identities were developed, along with a retail planogram. The sub-brands were shared with retail customers and were well received.
Consumer Feedback on Sub Brand Names
While these brands are no longer actively on the market, some classic editions are still sold online for Easy Plan and Master Plan. In addition, there is a video recommending the Easy Plan, and a Pinterest post recommending Noteworthy.
Franklin Covey Noteworthy:
“ My go to planner ‘Franklin covey noteworthy’ – better than a yellow pad!”
Franklin Covey Easy Plan YouTube video
Franklin Covey Master Plan for sale on eBay
For more resources and case studies of B2C and B2B naming, visit the Insight to Action Naming Resources page or contact us to begin a collaboration.
