Actually, I have no idea how Amazon.com got its name.
Imagining how it got its name illustrates the power of an image–painting a picture in words. An image is something you can perceive with at least one of your five senses. It helps convey something abstract you have in mind in a way that is concrete to others.
So, I imagine that Jeff Bezos goes to his marketing firm and says, “I need a name and corporate identity for my new tech start up.”
The firm says, “Great, what are you going to sell?”
Bezos: “Everything.”
In my imaginary meeting, there’s an awkward silence. Then, for some amount of time, the marketing company tries to eke more detail out of Bezos. They work diligently to get him to define a target audience, a target industry, a focus for what the company will really do. They present well-meaning and well-informed arguments about how successful brands understand who their customers are and focus like a laser beam on exactly the right people who will form the core of their customer base. Smart companies know how to appeal to their customers.
But Bezos has something in mind that hasn’t been done before, and holds his ground. I imagine he’d be polite but firm. “Really, I’m going to sell everything. To everyone. Everything, from A to Z.”
The next day the marketing team convenes to discuss what to do. They’re a little perplexed. They’re getting paid to establish a brand and a corporate identity, but they don’t know who to appeal to. They are not sure what the entity is, much less the identity.
Eventually, maybe after a few days, pressure builds to please the client. So, someone sits down and determines to be creative. He sits with his pen and reviews the notes. He starts thinking, “Everything from A to Z.” It’s a visual clue, an image.
He draws it.
In hindsight, it looks obvious, but I’m sure at the time, it wasn’t. It took some time to drop the arrow beneath the letters, play with putting some other letters in between to see if he could connect the A and the Z. An M in the middle would have been very suggestive. The line would evolve to curve slightly so that it’s as much smile as arrow between two points.
In preparing the idea for Bezos’s next meeting, I’m sure they came up with all kinds of rationales. Maybe they found some stock photos to suggest the power of the Amazon river, which of course for centuries carried resources from the interior of South America to the Atlantic Ocean, or as an ancient chief might have said, carried everything downriver to markets.
I’m sure there were other contenders for the name of the company that has disrupted retail forever, but Amazon.com would have made Bezos smile. It’s subtle, but the name actually says exactly what he wanted it to say: Everything from A to Z.
Coaching engagements for brand elements are available. By developing your brand elements with a coach, you can generate more authentic, more effective, and more affordable brand elements. Book a free session if you are looking to brand your company.