Perfumery Professions: Marie Petit, naming and branding consultant

How exactly does a brand choose a name for a fragrance? How do you go about it? Do you test your ideas with consumers first?
Let’s say a company is looking for a name for an international fragrance. A future brand name that will be easy to pronounce in different countries, that stands out, is easy to remember and of course, isn’t too long! When companies look for a name, the search often starts in-house. After a few brainstorming sessions and some back and forth with the legal department, they’re often back to square one. Hardly any of the ideas turn out to be marketable, in legal terms. Deadlines are approaching by then, so the marketing department calls us. After analyzing the company’s environment (their existing brand names and their competitors’), the agency proposes a range of names, sometimes hundreds of them. A first, long list is then picked and put through a series of filters: semiotics**, the company’s brand image, linguistics, phonetics and legal aspects. As a rule, only about 20% of the suggestions make it through, with the largest number being eliminated by the Class 3 legal filter***. In that category, there are almost 89,000 names registered in names; 41,000 for Europe, and 27,000 internationally. Our creative accompaniment has 2 phases: first, an exploratory meeting (30 - 40 names) and then, after a briefing, more focused results (20 to 30 names). The company selects a short list from that. The names on their short list will be tested on consumer focus groups in the appropriate countries. After the results of both qualitative and quantitative studies are known, we provide validation and interpretation. Then it is usually the top executive, i.e. the CEO, who makes the final decision.

With the ever-increasing number of new fragrances, how do brands manage to find new names that are creative, attractive and… available?
It has been getting more and more complicated to do that. But creativity, combined with legality right from the start, plays a determining role. You have to know how to find a way around obstacles, find solutions with legal precedents, propose sharing agreements, anticipate problems in order to save a good name… And the creative process itself needs to be rich and multi-facetted, the quantity and variety of names proposed is key. That’s why we always go beyond the brief: we multiply the pathways, broadening the field of exploration as much as possible. We never get trapped by trends, we play with words and phrases, with less commonly used letters, try to invent a new language every time. Each and every creation is custom-made.

What do you think about foreign brands that choose French names for their creations? Do they sell better? Does it make customers think the brand is French?
On the perfume market, the French language is not a handicap, au contraire! Foreign markets spontaneously associate it with Parisian glamour and the historical savoir-faire of French perfumers. Yet, conversely, French brands often use foreign names, and they always have. As far back as 1939, you had perfumes called Scandal and My Sin (Lanvin), and Shocking (Schiaparelli)… Besides, travel, exoticism and a sense of escaping the ordinary are still key concepts in fragrance names, and last year’s crop of new launches certainly doesn’t contradict that. We had: ‘5 :40 pm in Madagascar’ from Kenzo; ‘Paris-Moscou’, ‘Paris-New York’, and ‘Paris-Tokyo’ from Guerlain, ‘Arabian Nights’ from By Killian, and more.

Can’t finding a name that works all over the world get tricky sometimes?
Knowing that a fragrance can wind up being sold in airports everywhere, you can’t overlook many languages. The main languages that we filter for are Chinese, English, (and American English), Brazilian (Portuguese), Japanese, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Italian and German. You have to check how the words and syllables are pronounced, the letters used, make sure you avoid any misunderstandings with slang or curse words or anything like that. You always have to watch out for possible conflict with religions, especially when it comes to sexual connotations. And you have to check that there isn’t already another product in a different category that bears that name. For instance, Euphoria, the Calvin Klein perfume, was already an elegantly pleasurable jewel – a best-selling sex-toy – in Spain. For Burberry’s fragrance ‘The Beat’ the enekia agency was asked to study how it would go over in France. (It’s tricky because “beat” is a homophone for a slang word for male genitals in French, but the spelling is almost identical to the word “béat”, which is related to the concept “beatitude”).

Could you give us some examples of product names that would have been ill-chosen for an international item, or even any slip-ups made by big brands?
Absolutely, things don’t always come across the way you meant in some countries. Renault might not have called their latest 4WD vehicle ‘Koleos’ if they’d realized that it comes from the Greek root for word envelope or testicles. In cars, once again, Mitsubishi had to change the name of their ‘Pajero’ model in Spain, where it meant a guy who jerks off. ‘Bledina,’ the baby-food brand, means ‘slut’ in Russian.

In fragrance and cosmetics, are there products or ranges whose names change depending on the country?
Lots of brands have names that change depending on the country, for a variety of reasons: different meaning, slang, swear word, difficult pronunciation and more… Names have to have a good sonority to make them easier to remember. At L’Oréal: Elsève is Elvital in Germany and other Northern European countries, and Elvive in the USA and GB. Then there’s Maybelline, which is paired with Gemey (in France), Jade (in Germany), Colorama (in Brazil) and Miss Ylang (in Argentina), to increase foreign sales. Among perfumes, Givenchy’s ‘Ange ou Démon’ is called ‘Ange ou Etrange’ in the Arab Emirates, ‘Axe’ deodorants are called ‘Lynx’ in G.B. And Frédéric Malle’s fragrance ‘French Lover’ was re-christened ‘Bois d’Orage’ in the USA, where the term had a negative connotation.

What about the other way around, do you know any names that refer to different products in different countries?
In France, Calgon is a Reckitt Benckiser product for keeping washing machines sediment-free, but in the USA it’s the name of a bath & body line by Coty. Sometimes you get the same name in totally different categories: Origins, a cosmetics and skin-care brand is also the name of the latest product from the Cadbury Group: a new Hollywood chewing gum with natural flavors. Creating neologisms can avoid that kind of problem and give an item a unique personality; the thing is, when you invent a new word, you have to invest more in advertising to familiarize people with it. But a neologism can suggest and evoke lots of things, tell a story or let a product express itself. And it the product has good graphics and visuals as well, the impact is reinforced and you’ve pulled it off!

(*) Among enekia’s “babies”: Azzaro’s ‘Now’ and ‘Twin’, Lancôme’s ‘Magnifique’, “Yes to Volume, No to Clumps” for a Bourjois mascara, ‘Aroma Sun Expert’ for Decléor’s new sun-protection range …
(**) Semiotics is the study of signs and their meaning, from the point of view of linguistics, social sciences and/or medicine.
(***) When names are registered in order to protect their use, this category includes both fragrances and cosmetics.