Brands aim for personal touch on products

“A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” Though Dale Carnegie was talking about nurturing relationships, a lot of startups these days are incorporating his observation into branding strategy. They are naming themselves after people. Over the last few years, a crowd of new companies has emerged across tech, finance and health — all sporting a first-name brand.

“Oscar,” “Alfred,” “Lola” — they have the look and feel of a friend, a colleague, maybe even your cat.

And that’s the point: Make a connection with consumers that even Carnegie would appreciate. The strategy seems to be working. Research shows that the more simple and human-sounding the name, the greater the company’s success.

Brands with short, easy to pronounce names were viewed more positively by investors, a 2012 study published in the Journal of Financial Economics found.

By reducing name length by just one word, companies can see a boost of 2.53 percent to their book-to-market ratio — a formula used to find the market value of a company — or $3.75 million for a mediumsize firm, according to the study.

The name game isn’t so much about the products or services being sold. It’s a subconscious approach to branding that borders on anthropomorphizing a company.

“If you don’t want to become commoditized, you need to have something special,” said Neil Parikh, co-founder and chief operating officer of mattress startup Casper. “Everything has a brand, from vitamins to your doctor’s office to mattresses, but the ones that have a sense of depth — where you can understand who that person might be like — those are the ones you want to interact with, because you can see what it’s like. It’s three-dimensional.”

The strategy has become an imperative to cut through the cacophony of online brands vying for attention.

Consumers want an emotional connection, something that will cause them to develop brand loyalty — and it starts with the name.

For Marcus, the personal lending startup founded in 2016 by Goldman Sachs, the biggest question before launch was how big a connection the brand would have, at least publicly, to its parent company.

“When you called it ‘Goldman Sachs,’ consumers said ‘Well, I’ve heard of Goldman Sachs, but that’s not for me — that’s for wealthy people and institutions,’ ” said Dustin Cohn, head of brand management and communications at Marcus.

He’s also led the unit’s “brand architecture,” which included choosing a name.

After whittling down 2,000 contenders to just 10, “Marcus” was added at the last minute, he said: The only human name on the list.

“In addition to being connected to Goldman Sachs’s heritage, the name felt accessible and added a human element to financial services,” Cohn said.

“It created this one-on-one conversation from a person, i.e., Marcus, to another person.” One of Goldman Sachs’ founders was Marcus Goldman.