Office Meetings On Brand Names Made Of Invented Words

We feel brand names are powerful. But first we must be clear that the brand name is in fact not representative of one drive and pursuit of a company, but that a variety of complex and even conflicting objectives are forcibly collected together under the brand name. Today one company is home not to a variety of slightly different “departments” but rather a variety of highly differentiated “offices” entirely, so that there is no single powerful brand named company uniting all the offices underneath it harmoniously.

In the series of meetings between the different conflicting offices in a company, it is when a new word, an invented word even, is blurted out in the angry and fiery debate/dispute, and when a number of conflicting interpretations of that word arise from the conflicting offices, that the dominant office aggressively pushes that new word as a brand name to the weaker offices. The brand name is not a point of agreement between the different offices of a company as we may think on the outside but of fierce competition and disagreement.

Meetings held to discuss possible brand names are rare opportunities that produce the fiercest competition between the offices within a company. These meetings only occur at the beginning of the company's formation, at a stage when there is no obvious dominating office in the company. These meetings test each office's ability, drive and vision to take the company forward. The obscure brand name, the brand name where the words are invented, is difficult for the other offices to attack because invented words don't connote anything and cannot easily be “free-associated” with other words or ideas.