Brand Name Analysis of Procter & Gamble with Sony and Google

In my assessment, it is a wise idea to create a one-word short brand name for a business and then use that single name with any extended product line. It will save on marketing budget, create a goodwill for the business name and it will boost sales of any new products included under the umbrella of brand name.

On the other hand, multi-branding of products has also some limited benefits; for example, failure of one product brand will not impact on the sales of other product brands.

Avoid Model of Procter & Gamble – Multi-Branding

This is an example of business name which is weak due to a long name. The Procter & Gamble Company is a US based multinational brand in consumer products. It is a successful company, but its brand name is not a good selection – Procter & Gamble is a long and non-brandable business name.

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Although company makes efforts to promote its short version based on initials on website as well as on products, but P&G is also relatively long to pronounce. It would have been fine to remove ampersand and selecting only ‘PG’ but that might have bad connotations. So, the chosen brand name is not good, in my humble opinion.

As the long name of Procter & Gamble cannot fit well with a product name, so apparently the company spends huge budget on marketing of products, named as independent brands.

I am using products of Procter & Gamble since long but to be honest, it is only today after visiting their website that I knew that Ariel, Pampers, Gillette, Pantene, Oral-B, Vicks, Olay, and other products belong to the company. It is because of multi-branding strategy of the company as well as long brand name.

The products of P&G which I already had the knowledge that they belong to the company were Head & Shoulders shampoo and Safeguard soap.

The company promotes each product individually with distinct branding – an unwise approach because it adds up marketing cost.

For example, when you visit the website of Zevo, it does not mention Procter & Gamble or P&G as part of domain name or on the top of page. However, at the end of homepage (footer), the site mentions the main business name (P&G) of the company.

Similarly, the company apparently wants to independently promote its diaper brand Pampers because Procter & Gamble is not mentioned clearly on the website except on footer.

Apparently, the company also wants to keep the identity of Braun as independent and mentions the main business name only at site footer.

Similar is the case with Pepto Bismol product brand of the company.

In short, the Procter & Gamble prefers multi-branding of products, rather than business extendable branding.

It appears that now the company is realizing the importance of brand name extension. Recently the company tried to include the brand name with some of its products – after acquiring health division of Merck in 2018 and renamed it to ‘Procter & Gamble Health Limited’ and even made ‘pg’ as part of website domain. However, due to the length of business name it did not fit well, in my humble opinion.

In my view, you should choose a better, short, and easy to pronounce business brand and use that with every product under the umbrella of the main company as did by Google and Sony in following examples.

Follow Model of Sony and Google – Business Name Extension

In my opinion, it is a better strategy to focus on the main one brand identity and attach that name with each individual product or service so that customers can easily identify the main business brand behind the product – the concept of corporate branding. This strategy is only successful if the primary business name is short and unique. It will reduce the cost of marketing and increase the sale – the only condition is that your primary brand should have a good brand image.

For example, Sony and Google are one of the leading companies and both companies use main business name with each individual product.

For example, when you open the site of Tilt Brush, the main brand name of Google is clearly displayed on the top of homepage, becoming part of the logo.

Similarly, Google includes the primary corporate business name with each individual product such as Google Meet, Google TV, and Google Fonts.

On the same lines, Sony promotes the primary business name with each product. For example, in June 2022, Sony America registered a new company named as ‘Sony Space Communications Corporation’ including the main Sony name in it.

The word ‘Sony’ is clearly and prominently mentioned on every individual product of the company including cameras, microphones, camcorder, media storage devices, projectors, video walls, medical devices.

It includes the main business brand name in website domains of Sony Music and Sony Pictures.

Although the word ‘Sony’ does not include in the domain of its gaming website but on the homepage, the top most bar clearly announces that PlayStation belongs to Sony.

Sony distinctively brands its drone product as ‘Airpeak’ but the word ‘Sony’ is clearly imprinted on the product.

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From above analysis, we can also conclude that we should choose a scalable, unique, and short brand name (like that of Sony) so that it can work as umbrella for any new product line.

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