Last week, the world was abuzz over royal baby naming news. In case you left the planet for a bit, he was dubbed “George Alexander Louis of Cambridge” (or “Georgie” for short, as we learned this week from his Grandfather Charles).
Also last week, the world was slightly less abuzz over my post on how we came to be named “Clearfield.” Branding nomenclature is a highly complex and structured discipline. (Even if I completely understood it, I wouldn’t bore you with the details.) What I do know is that once we re-christened our company as “Clearfield,” all subsequent products and services we offered had to be named in such a fashion that complemented and supported our overall brand strategy. Beyond that, the names have to actually mean something. So, I thought I’d give you a little glimpse into how we named a few Clearfield products.
When we introduced the Clearview Cassette in late 2007, we chose to capitalize on the Clear from our name Clearfield – while spotlighting the vision of what we were delivering through a modular design. The fact that the Clearview Cassette utilizes a clear outer housing, which allows for quick and easy first-step troubleshooting, was a name-driver, of course. More so, because of the product’s 12-ports at a time scalability, providing a “grow as you go” flexibility, we wanted customers to confidently feel they had a “Clearview” and clear control of their fiber management needs.
When we brought FieldSmart to market, we wanted to emphasize that this fiber management platform was “grounded” (i.e. the Field) in practical, craft-friendly foundations. Smart was based on the scalable architecture, allowing customers to align the increase in capital equipment cost with the increase in subscriber revenue.
FieldShield continued this practical branding approach. It is still branded as Smart but its name had to reflect that the product was a new fiber delivery method that protects the fiber even in environments that were previously not viable. Hence, the Shield.
All of this talk of naming reminds me of “The Name Game” song – sometimes referred to as “The Banana Song.” For those of you too young to remember, Minnesotan’s own Jessica Lang resurrected it last season on “American Horror Story,” which is set in a fictional insane asylum. There were times when we drove each other crazy with naming options, so this seems apt to include it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e37NtAYb5g