Brand Name Initials – Pros and Cons

Abbreviated brand name should consist of minimum letters like ‘GM’ for General Motors – not like the RFDM Solutions of British Columbia, Canada.

In my opinion, the initials up to three letters are relatively acceptable option but more than that can make the brand name very difficult to pronounce and popularize. However, if the set of long initials consists of vowels, then such long acronym brand name can also be a good option – see example of ELVO below.

Understand the Pros and Cons of brand Acronyms through Examples

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• AarhusKarlshamn is using the brand name initials as AAK. In my opinion, their choice of using initials is a good choice (not best) because the wordmark (AarhusKarlshamn) is long, non-rememberable, and difficult to speak.

• London Electric Vehicle Company officially uses initials (LEVC) as brand name. The company also names its vehicles as TX which is in my opinion, an excessive and inappropriate use of acronyms – a bad branding practice.

• Rice Advanced Engineering Systems and Research is a California based company manufacturing sports cars, named after its founder Eric Rice. It is a long business name. So, the company uses initials of RAESR as brand name. In my humble opinion the founder made two mistakes first deciding on such as long business name of the company and secondly using initials which are also long and difficult to pronounce.

• AVROTROS is another example of bad acronyms because it is too long consisting of eight letters - so difficult to pronounce. It is a radio and television broadcaster in Netherlands.

• Hellenic Vehicle Industry is Greek manufacturer of special purpose vehicles for army and civilians. The company uses ELVO as brand name derived from the Romanized version (Elliniki Viomihania Ohimaton) of the company name. In my opinion it is a good example of initializing the brand name. Though ELVO is abbreviation but the vowels in it make it a complete word which is short and easy to pronounce.

• Pohang Iron and Steel Company of South Korea derived its short name of POSCO by taking initials of ‘PO’ from Pohang, ‘S’ from Steel and ‘CO’ from Company. It is another example of easy to pronounce acronym brand name, because of vowels.

• QuikTrip is a chain of convenience stores in the US. Although its full name is easy to pronounce but it brands itself with both full name as well as acronyms but more as QT and its two letter initials are even better and easy than the full name.

• American Family Life Assurance Company of Columbus uses its initials for adopting a short business name as Aflac. It is also smooth to pronounce due to vowels.

Initials are only good when they are easy to pronounce for example SCOTUS and POTUS used often for the President and Supreme Court of the United States – being easy and short to speak.

Single Word Brand Name is Better Than Using Initials

Although it is fact that using abbreviated initials is quite better option than using a long and non-rememberable business name – for example the initials of ‘gsk’ are used as brand name for the long GlaxoSmithKline company name and the acronyms of IBM are used for the long name of International Business Machines Corporation.

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However, using initials as brand name cannot be better than using smoothly spoken single word brand name. Each letter used in initials gives the impression of complete word while pronouncing it.

The founders of German supermarket brand Edeka timely concluded this drawback and discarded the initials E.d.K. in favor of a single and easy to speak word of Edeka. [RD]

Similarly, Microsoft apparently also recognized this flaw of using abbreviated letters as brand name. Microsoft discarded many of its products using the initials such as MSN Search for Bing and MSN Expedia Maps and MSN Virtual Earth for simply Bing Maps.

Migros Betriebe Birsfelden AG was using its initials as MBB. However, in 2007 MBB initials were removed, and company name changed to Delica – a beautiful, short name for the company. Delica is quite easier to speak than MBB.

For another example, Federal Express Corporation (commonly used Federal Express for marketing) company was established in 1971. The company was listed in the New York Stock Exchange as FDX in 1978 and used the short name.

Though FDX is short name of three letters but in pronunciation it sounds like three complete words. Its nickname FedEx became more popular. So, the company replaced the FDX name to FedEx as official name in the year 2000. It is noteworthy that its official name in stock exchange is till used FDX in 2022. [RD]

Apparently, FedEx (single word) seems longer than FDX (acronym) but, FedEx is easier to pronounce than FDX. [RD]

Therefore, you should use initials wisely while deciding a brand name of your business.

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