The right product name can make all the difference.

In 2015, our company had a new product that needed a brand name, a marketing strategy, and a visual marketing campaign. Our CEO asked a room full of top-level managers to brainstorm a name that would be highly recognizable and intuitive. It could come from another industry as long as it wasn’t copyrighted. The product we were to brand was a new type of tunnel boring machine that could bore in highly variable types of ground—a hybrid machine.

I thought about parallel products in other industries, and immediately thought of Crossover vehicles, successfully used to describe vehicles that are a hybrid of passenger car and SUV. After much discussion and input of dozens of other names, we voted on the Crossover Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) as the new name for the product.

We worked with a talented marketing agency to develop a logo, ads, and other branded materials. I then developed a marketing strategy for written materials that included a concentrated effort in editorial articles, technical papers, blogs, product writing on our website, webinars and more.

Our efforts were highly successful: based on an annual customer survey, recognition of the Crossover name went from just 33 percent in 2015 to over 80 percent in 2018. Customers inquired about Crossover TBMs to our sales staff even when the geology didn’t require the machine. It continues to be one of our most successful and profitable product lines.

Logo Design: Hansen Belyea, www.hansenbelyea.com