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The test is stringent but paints a very clear picture, with this deeper understanding corporations can guide their brands to appropriate winnings, with modifications, or establishing a stronger platform from which further name identities can be built upon with a higher degree of confidence.

The Five Star Standard of Naming has been originated and developed by ABC Namebank, who has defined these five characteristics as primal traits among powerful brand identities. The current market demands powerful names based on originality and simplicity in order to attain success on a global scale. Despite common sense simplicity and a pragmatic approach to this ranking process, most corporations are not fully aware of the gravity or the risk of advancing their weaker and injured name identities on the global battlefields especially when their aggressive pushes to boost are often simply increasing the brand's mortality. The west is already littered with thousands of unheard mega branding project failures, especially when creating a Five Star Standard Name Identity is not an expensive exercise, and considerably less than the promotion costs used to push a struggling identity.

Under the present situation, the real winners will be the nations that recognize the global branding and image challenges that face their domestic corporations, and provide effective platforms to cultivate these brands to overcome these global realities. There is a strong need for mass-educational programs to train armies of branding and marketing savvy students, who in turn, become local champions that produce success stories. Establishing national institutions with sophisticated programs on a large scale will ensure an image-savvy culture. Despite these institutions, the global battle of brands will intensify when thousands of new global-reach, brand name identities emerge from India and China, which will dwarf the current landscape of western brand name establishment, as the new winners and losers are divided based solely on absolute, 100% global ownership.

Currently, the Top 1000 Brands of the world mostly enjoy their Five Star Status, but it's the tens of thousands of other young and old brands that remain in the race, struggling to gain some attention, that are caught in serious global challenges for either being too difficult or obscure to be understood around the world, or too simple and cute to be protected by trademarks. Without a Five Star Standard, most brands in search of global fame will stay entrenched in a losing war with their struggling identity.

Concluded.

Naseem Javed, recognized as a world authority on corporate image and global name identities, is a harsh critic of casual and accidental naming. He is a dynamic speaker on corporate image and branding issues, and is also the author of Naming for Power. He founded ABC Namebank International, an image and branding consultancy over 25 years ago. Website: www.abcnamebank.com