How people respond to a name in a focus group is apt to be very different from how they are likely to respond to a name that's launched with an exciting and well-considered branding effort behind it. Without the context of your advertising and promotional efforts to inform their answers, focus group respondents almost always require company and product names to be descriptive, to provide more grounding information than they would ever need to function in the real world. As a result, the safest, most descriptive names most often emerge as the front-runners in qualitative studies.

Adopting the safest solution isn't always the best solution. Often the best solution requires a touch of the unexpected, a bit of daring or a dash of flair to stand out among the crowd. Focus groups can provide invaluable insight, but you cannot expect consumers to tell you which name offers the greatest brand-building opportunity. Ultimately, selecting a new name requires intuition. That's where branding experience and acumen take over and that's when extraordinary names are identified and selected.

The bottom line is that qualitative research is a tool best applied to help you understand how consumers understand and appreciate who you are, what you do or provide, and how that measures up against what your competitors offer. The insight you gain from qualitative research can indeed help you express your brand in a compelling manner. But qualitative research is poorly applied as an evaluative tool, and should therefore not be used to determine which name candidate will ultimately prove to be the "winner."

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