If you feed a Finch fontina, that will make us think about how much we like cheese. If we think about how much we like cheese, we’ll be reminded of one of life’s delectable treasures: Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. If we’re reminded of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, we’ll picture the happy arcs that adorned our faces as children while consuming Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, and how it mirrored those golden crescents of goodness. Picturing when we were children will make us think of other things we liked to do as kids, such as watching Saturday morning cartoons. Thinking of watching Saturday morning cartoons will make us remember the commercials we used to see during those broadcasts, including the one with the girl who changes the name of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese to Kraft Cheese & Macaroni because “it’s the cheesiest.” Thinking of changing the name of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese will make us recall Kraft’s proclamation last August to divide into two companies and choose a new name for one of them.
Kraft has worked its wholesome wizardry on us for more than a century, ever since dairy dynamo James L. Kraft started a wholesale door-to-door cheese business in 1905. As a company, it’s as iconic a brand as you get. It’s no wonder, therefore, that there’s considerable interest in Kraft Foods’ recent report that they had made good on their intent to divide into two companies by announcing the name for their new subsidiary, Mondalez International.
The current buzz surrounding Mondalez is not about Kraft's decision to split into one North American grocery business and one global snack foods business, however, but the name of the new company itself. While shareholders overwhelmingly approved the name, others were not as supportive. When Kraft first announced it was considering the name, The New York Post ran a one-world headline asking “MONDEWHAAAAT?”
Is all this noise surrounding the name really warranted? For brand naming professionals, sometimes referred to as onomasticians, name is everything. Certainly, a brand’s name offers yet another point of consumer influence—both conscious and unconscious. Names that evoke positive imagery and warm feelings will likely win greater consumer trial than ones that conjure up negative impressions.
Lexicon, the company behind such recognizable brand names as the BlackBerry, PowerBook, Dasani, and The Swiffer, has conducted exhaustive and pivotal trials on how people perceive sounds when removed from meaning. Their studies revealed that among both English and non-English speakers, “C,” “V,” and “P” sounds are regarded as expressive and happy. Hence, The Swiffer. The company picked the sounds they wanted to use first and then developed the brand name from there.
Mondalez, on the other hand, was named through a very different convention. It was coined in an internal contest by two Kraft employees. The name is a mash-up of the words for “world” and “delicious” in Latin and several other Romance languages. It’s supposed to connote “delicious world.”
When asked to comment on the name, Allen P. Adamson, managing director at Landor Associates, avoided expressing an opinion. Instead he congratulated Kraft on how swiftly they were able to find a name and deal with all of the associated trademark and legal challenges such things face these days.
Unlike Landor, we Finches don’t ever shy away from sharing our opinion on current branding discussions. The fact of the matter is, for Kraft’s purpose, Mondalez is a perfectly serviceable name. As a consumer brand, we might take a different stand, but Mondalez was never intended to be that. The name itself will be largely invisible to most consumers.
So what will really change for the consumer? On the packages of well-known snack food brands such as Oreo, Cadbury, Trident Gum, Tang, and Ritz Crackers, the manufactured and distributed by credit will read (in small print) “Mondalez International Incorporated” instead of “Kraft Foods Incorporated.” Despite the nice ring “Mondalez Macaroni & Cheese, Please” has, grocery brands such as Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Velveeta, Oscar Mayer, and yes, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese will remain under the Kraft Foods label.
Bottom line: Consumer brand names are crucially important as they are largely the first point of influence companies have with potential customers. Company names for businesses with many well-known branded products on the other hand, while still significant, are not the bee’s cheese...er, knees.
