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During the last half-century, all over India and including Asia, the number one practice of branding has been based on picking up names from Western Yellow Pages, "Just let the fingers do the branding tricks". Hence, hundreds and thousands of Western Names are
blatantly copied, which in turn, have kept beautiful and original local ideas buried as sidekicks to Western identities.

In the course of human development, countries do come up with amazing and original ideas, like the invention of Silicon Valley, which not only incubated a global revolution of e-commerce and also, the demise of hundreds of copycats from silicon woods to jungles, rivers, roads and oceans. Watergate germinated "thisGate" and "thatGate". Historically, it can be proven that any copycatting on any scale fails big time, and accidental naming invites accidental cost, creating injured name brands which cripple long-term marketing, eventually fading away. Open any old magazine and the proof is right there.

The global complexity of billions of name images floating on e-commerce has turned this issue into a science, and the art of fondling a dictionary is now lost forever. It requires tactical understanding of corporate and business naming rules, trademark laws, global domain management systems and international marketing issues. It demands an in-depth understanding of languages, translations, connotations, perceptions and human interactions with words, memorability, type-ability, protectability and dozens of other related issues. Create an open dialogue, conduct in-depth audit, test the five-star standard, available on the net, demand practitioners with all these skills in your boardroom, otherwise your image and mega identity program will simply be doomed.

The old mass-advertising model is dying, very fast, and a new style of marketing and online access marketing offers extremely unique opportunities to become a successful brand with the smallest budget, in the shortest period of time with maximum impact. But once again, these sophisticated processes cannot be confused with general-logo-based-branding as global icon building and name branding is a very special art.

The Indian film industry has a bright future and will continue forward, but as the media blurs and the meltdown continues, the term "Bollywood" will diffuse into a low-tech brand perception of colorful-dance-routines-based-cinematography that has become the lead identifier, but hopefully the new leaders of the industry will re-establish brand new global iconic identities based on world-class standards. A great future for the Indian film industry lies ahead.

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