Do Not Include Numbers Or Special Characters In Your Brand Name…

“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is—it is what consumers tell each other it is.”

– Scott Cook

As we always insist, brand naming is an important process that makes your business a successful one. If you choose a successful brand name it becomes the first step of a successful business journey. As the quotation suggests, if you need your brand name to be a word of mouth, your brand name must be a perfect pick.

In this article, we will discuss why you need to avoid numeric and special characters while naming your brand.

No, you can include numbers, symbols, signs, punctuations and characters freely in your brand name. For example, 

• Numbers – 0 to 9
• Signs – pound sterling sign, dollar sign, yen sign, euro sign, equals signs, plus sign, percent sign
• Punctuation marks- fullstops, commas, colons, semi-colons, and hyphens
• Letters- from a to z (alphabet)

And there are more. But according to the brand name specialists including numbers, special characters and symbols make your brand name vulnerable to face the competition. Following are some disadvantages of including numbers and special characters in your brand name.

• Hard To Memorize And Pronounce

When a brand name contains numbers or special characters, it makes the name hard to pronounce and memorize. Even if it is easy to pronounce, the name makes no sense for customers because they don’t know the story or the reason behind the numbers you use. So, you have to think about your decision again if you are planning to include numbers and special characters in your brand name.

• It confuses your target customers

When you have numbers or special characters in a brand name, customers can’t grab it quickly as you expect. And this makes it difficult for them to find your brand name on the internet. Because it can cause mistyping issues with these types of brand names. For example, there can be confusion about whether to use letters or numbers when typing your brand name. It is good to select a brand name that is easy to interact with customers.

• Less Attractive

When a brand name consists of numbers and special characters it makes the brand name less eye-catching. For example,

Google05@, Google2.0, Google, Go#gle, %Google88.

What is the most attractive brand name for your eye? Mostly you select the third one, Google. Because all the other brand names include numbers and special characters.

• Missing Brand Message

Some businesses and startups include numbers or special characters to their business name to convey more information about their products, or company. But mostly, in this case, they fail because it means nothing more than confusion for the customers. Mostly, they don’t care to search for the information behind those numbers or special characters. So adding those to a brand name is not a clever idea.

• Weak Domain Name

When you upgrade your business to an online platform, you’ll need a domain name. Converting a brand name with numbers /special characters is a risk. A domain name with numbers and special characters does not appear clear in the URL. It confuses your online customers when dealing with the domain name. It confuses them in many ways such as typing errors, difficulty to remember, etc.

• 21st Century Fox- American Multinational Mass Media Company, founded in 1980
• 7Up –     American soft drink brand founded in 1986
• 7 Eleven- American Convenience store chain founded in 1927
•  3M-   American Multinational Conglomerate company founded in 1902

These are some of the famous brand names with numbers and still perform well. But how? 

It is because, in their founding years, the competition was nothing compared to the present. So, creating a customer base was not a big struggle like nowadays.

Most alphanumeric brand names make potential customers identify them as someone being either lazy or tries to be overly smart. These mistakes happen because of a lack of knowledge or not spending enough time studying the brand naming process.

The main reasons customers reject these types of brand names are they do not make sense to customers. And the brand message or the story behind the numbers are unknown to them. In that case, those brand names mean nothing to your target audience. Until they hear from you directly or check the about section on your website it will remain as a question.

It is not a good idea to use this type of alphanumeric brand name to take a risk.

It is okay to use numeric and special characters to the brand name if you are targeting Chinese, Japanese, and Korean markets.

There are many similarities between these three languages. If you take a look at some brand names in Chinese, Japanese and Korean markets you will notice many brand names consist of numbers. There are mainly two reasons for including numbers in the brand names in these countries. One is that in these languages numbers have meanings. 

The second reason is the results of a study have proven that Chinese, Japanese and Korean customers recognize some numbers as lucky numbers such as 8. So as it is all about attracting customers to the brand name and creating a brand identity in the market, you can use numbers in your brand name when it comes to these markets.

A famous American soft drink brand 7up faced a problem when they were introducing their business to China. They found out, 7up means death through drinking in Shanghai, which is a negative meaning. 

That is why you need to be more careful when dealing with numbers. There are different meanings for the numbers in many countries. Make sure your brand name does not generate negative connotations in any language as it affects your brand identity when expanding the business.

As you can see, using numeric characters and special characters for a brand name is not advisable. But if you have a desire to put numbers in your brand name, you can use them for the sub-brand names. For example, Apple. Usually, they name their iPhones with numbers, iPhone 7, iPhone 8, iPhone 11, iPhone 12, etc.

A good brand name must be memorable. If you want to be successful, you have to make sure that your brand name is simple enough to directly get into your target customers’ minds as soon as they see it.

Since the beginning, it is our point that using numbers in a brand name is not so wise. Let’s look at it in a simpler way.

• Travel Key                                                
• 743move4

Which name is easy for you to remember compared to the other? It is definitely the 1st name “Travel Key” but why is the 1st name easy to remember and not the 2nd name “743move4”? 

Words have a meaning tied to them but not numbers. A combination of numbers and letters does not make anything meaningful or familiar to a human mind because they are so complex to look at and remember. But a meaningful word has the full power of catching the attention of a person and going into their mind.

Conclusion – Brand names with letters are more memorable than brand names with numbers.