So now that we’re out the silly web 2.0 naming conventions that defined websites for a while (did you spell Zillow right the first time you tried to go there?), we can finally get back to to a sincere discussion on brand names. Now, I’m not going to talk about what’s a good one, how to name your product, etc. But I will talk about what happens after you create a brand. It gets changed. Shortened. Abbreviated.

Abbreviations are created for numbers of different reasons. You can become a stock which forces a maximum of a four letter way to describe you e.g. GOOG. You can merge with another company, and since egos are always involved and no one wants to give up their namesake on a company, you initial the words of the two companies together e.g. BBDO. It also could be a marketing reinvention or an offshoot e.g. Gatorade’s “G” campaign, conceived not longer after the debut of their “G2” product line. Brands’ customers can also develop shortened nicknames for products at any time e.g. the Volkswagen Bug.

The danger of abbreviations in branding is a gravitational pull towards the generic. The shorter your brand name the more likely it is there are five or six other companies with the same name. This not only affects awareness and word of mouth, but also search engines. Can Gatorade really optimize for “what is G?” when it’s typed into Google? (no, but now some bloggers have.) And what is the answer? Is it Gatorade? Or Groupon’s rewards program? If you become aware that abbreviations are bound to happen, you can steer this trend in a positive direction for your brand. When McDonald’s decided to target younger people with ads in the 90s, it had young actors refer to the brand as “Mickey D’s” in commercials, which is 1) easy to remember and 2) easily distinguishable from other brands, yet still shorter than their actual brand name. If you type in Mickey D’s into Google now, McDonald’s website shows up first.

Thinking about this when naming your company can save you a lot of marketing headaches down the road and potentially create some opportunities. If you’re thinking of starting a company (or, just for fun, if you already have one), take a potential/your current brand name. Now, pick a stock symbol for it. Pick a name for a sub-brand that is related to the brand name. Now pick a shortened version for it. Now find a way to abbreviate it. Now search all of those terms on Google. If you’re scared by what it returns, you might want to keep trying brand names until you aren’t.