The Importance of a Good Name: From Senator Frozen Products to Häagen-Dazs

Häagen-Dazs is an example of the importance of choosing the right name to reach the audience you want to sell your products to.

The Naming (trade name of companies and products) is the discipline that focuses on deciding what a product will be called, or the name of a company or organization. Naming is considered a fundamental part of the naming process. brandThis includes all marketing activities that affect the company's image, such as the positioning and design of the logo, the packaging and the product itself. This naming process can take months or years.. Some key steps include specifying the objectives of the brand, developing the product name itself, evaluating names through target market testing and focus groups, choosing the final name, and finally identifying it as a trademark for protection.

An example of the importance of choosing the right name according to what you want to achieve is the case of Häagen-Dazs.

The original name of the ice cream store located in the South Bronx was Senator Frozen Products.

Its founder, Reuben Mattuswas born in Poland in 1912 to Jewish parents. His father died during World War I and his mother, a widow, emigrated to New York with her two children in 1921, where they joined an uncle who was engaged in the ice cream business of Italian lemons in Brooklyn. In the late 1920s, the family began making ice cream popsicles and, in 1929, chocolate-covered ice cream bars and sandwiches under the name of Senator Frozen Products on Southern Boulevard in the South Bronx, which they delivered by horse-drawn wagon to neighborhood stores in the Bronx.

The name would come from saying nonsense words until a good sounding combination was found.

Senator Frozen Products was profitable, but in the 1950s, the company's the large mass ice cream producers have started a price war. This led Mattus to devise a new direction for its business. And he saw in the high-end type of ice cream his chance to survive the big players in the industry and their price cuts.

In 1959, he decided to set up a new ice cream company with a European-sounding nameThe ice cream is a very sophisticated and classy product, to justify a high price and to stand out from the cheap ice cream brands.

Hurley's daughter, Doris Hurley, recounted in the 1996 PBS documentary "An Ice Cream Show"He said his father would sit at the kitchen table for hours saying nonsense words until he came up with a combination he liked. The reason he chose this method was to make the name unique and original.

Reuben Mattus finally opted for ".Häagen-Dazs"He was looking for a brand name that, according to him, Danish sonaraHowever, the pronunciation of the company name ignores the letters "ä" and "z", and letters like "ä" or digraphs like "zs" do not exist in Danish. According to Mattus, it was a tribute to Denmark's exemplary treatment of its Jews during the Second World War, and included a schematic map of Denmark on the first labels.. Mattus considered that Denmark was also known for its dairy products and had a positive image in the U.S.

Ultimately, Mattus's idea was to use a brand image that would to make New Yorkers believe that their ice creams were European.The name of the store had to be changed, and therefore of high quality, so they deserved to have a higher price than the competition. It was not only a matter of changing the name, the premises, the signage, even the way the employees dressed or behaved had to give the impression of "elite", quality and sophistication.

And boy, did it succeed. Virtually no one you ask where they think Häagen-Dazs is from will tell you they're from a neighborhood in New York City 🙂

Cover image by Courtney Cook at Unsplash

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