Brand (and band) names don’t really matter

Lucian Camp is a financial services brand consultant, copywriter, author and blogger. He co-presents the On The Other Hand podcast.

Have you ever heard of the South Carolina bluesman Floyd Council?  Born 1911, died 1976, singer, guitarist, mandolin player, also known as Dipper Boy Council?

No?  How about Pinkney Anderson, North Carolina blues singer and guitarist, 1900 to 1974?  Noted for his work with Blind Simmie Dooley and harmonica player Peg Leg Sam Jackson – not him either?

Actually, you have heard of both of these gentlemen.  You’ve heard of them because in Cambridge, England, far from the Carolinas, at some point in the mid-60s, a singer, guitarist and songwriter called Roger Barrett needed a name for his new psychedelic rock band.  Taking a break from the arduous task of thinking of something, he picked up a (vinyl) album by veteran American blues singer Blind Boy Fuller, perusing the erudite sleeve notes by leading bluesologist Paul Oliver.  In these, Oliver made mention of two influences on Fuller’s music, Council and Anderson.

Except that he named them in the opposite order, Anderson and Council.  And he used their first names, Pinkney and Floyd.  And as most people did, he abbreviated Pinkney to just Pink.  And one more clue – for some reason, Roger Barrett was known to everyone as Syd.   And in case you’re too young to know about him Syd Barrett was the original founder and leader of Pink Floyd, and that’s the true story of how the band got its name.

But after all that, the important thing – the only important thing – to understand about this over-detailed narrative is that none of it matters.  Many, many millions of people have heard and read the name of Pink Floyd on probably billions of occasions.  And a small fraction of one per cent of all those people on all those occasions have ever stopped to wonder why the band is named after two obscure bluesmen from the Carolinas, or what’s meant or implied by the fact that it is.

In fact, even in the band’s earliest days, when no-one knew anything about them and had no other experiences in their heads to shape their brand perceptions, the name brought no connection to the Carolina bluesmen for the simple reason that hardly anyone had ever heard of them.  Pink, if it meant anything, was a colour;  Floyd, I don’t know, there had been a boxer called Floyd Patterson, maybe something to do with him?

I suppose the name fitted in quite well with the fashion among sixties psychedelic bands for names consisting of more-or-less-meaningless two-word juxtapositions – Moby Grape, Buffalo Springfield, Jefferson Airplane, Electric Prunes – so it didn’t actively mislead or misdirect.  But in the stunning story of global success that followed over the ten years after Syd Barrett’s record-cover epiphany, it’s difficult to argue that the name had a major part to play – or, for that matter, that things would have gone even better with a better or just different name.

I draw a couple of conclusions from this little story.  First, brand names don’t really matter very much.  Brands need names, obviously, and it helps if they’re simple memorable and easy to say and spell.  But there are very few that play a demonstrable part in a firm’s, product’s or service’s success.

And second, insofar as they do matter, it is usually in their earlier years when people know little or nothing about them.  By the time you’ve recorded Dark Side Of The Moon, so to speak, the name means “The band that recorded Dark Side Of The Moon.”  Pink-ness and Floyd-ness pale into insignificance.

To be honest, I do have an axe to grind here.  I hate thinking up names.  It’s by far the most painful part of brand development.  Actually, it’s not the thinking up that’s hard – it’s the finding something that’s available, and it’s the getting everyone on the team to agree to it.  The whole subject is enshrouded in stress and extreme anxiety.  And everyone else working on the project –  the designers, all the digital people, the ad agency, the PR team – is sitting around doing nothing waiting for the name to be decided.

In fact, it’s the one part of brand development that I’d quite happily delegate to AI (as, indeed, I’m sure some branding agencies soon will).  I wonder if ChatGPT is good on 1930s South Carolina bluesmen.