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What are customers around the world saying about the new booming Middle Eastern brands? What are they reading in the brand names? Which ones are they loving and talking about? Which ones can they pronounce, type and remember easily? Are these new local brands
leading the charge for global mind-share, creating presence of greatness, or are they seriously lost in global translation?

Currently, 99% of mega Middle Eastern projects are being branded under Arabic-based names, which are mostly foreign to international audiences while some are projecting mixed messages due to translation, and impose very serious limitations to brand name appreciation, prolonging high costs in obtaining global mind-share.

To appreciate this dilemma, unless you are fluent in Japanese, try to make sense out of a fancy scripted Japanese name with some deeply rooted cultural message with rich heritage.

For this reason, over half a century ago, the global image-savvy corporate Japan developed all major brand names based on international rules of translations, negative connotations and pronunciations which fitted mass global appeal, making the names easy to talk about, spell and remember. Contrary to belief, on global branding, America really provided the largest battle-ground for branding, as it was the Japanese that truly laid the systematic foundation on what makes globally accepted and universal name-identities fit enough to conquer global image.

Decades ahead, Japan was on the fore-front of creating global brands, like Toyota, Minolta, Sony, Pentax, Sharp, Panasonic, Canon, and hundreds of other five-star standard names, as names originating from Japanese language would have never allowed such global acceptance.

Surprisingly today, China is caught into too many local language based name-brands that seriously inhibits internationalization of the name-identity. Very bad for a country that's now recognized as the world's largest factory, and by now, would have easily claimed hundreds of globally popular names. India currently sits in the middle. Being more open to non-local-language-naming, it is now on its way to becoming the next global powerhouse of domestic brands.

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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