it takes a village

Global brand name development for eBay

Often names we create for product branding have to pass muster in several languages. This project, for eBay’s community-based online classifieds service (think Craigslist), needed to fly in 16 different languages across three continents. And be available as a domain as well. For something like this, you don’t need naming specialists; you need magicians.

Luckily, Catchword’s network of international language experts—all of them native speakers—is unmatched in the naming industry. Our people know just about every language in the world. And they’re well-versed in the cultural and marketing issues that can plague global brand name development.

Our product branding focused on names that were friendly-sounding, short, easy-to-pronounce—and had relevant meaning. We also crafted names based on sound and rhythm (rather than overt meaning), since they’d have an easier time clearing the countless legal and cultural hurdles. In all, we created nearly 4,000 names in a rainbow of languages, including African tongues like Umbundu and Kongo. We then subjected hundreds to our semantic, linguistic, and cultural assessment process, before screening them—in depth—for trademark and URL availability

Kijiji was the winner. Unconventional, yet it fit our criteria to a T. For one thing, the word means “village” in Swahili: how cool is that for a site that’s designed to create community? And the repetitive, consonant-vowel structure is easy to pronounce virtually around the world. It’s also friendly and fun—and graphically intriguing. (Just look at their neat logo.)

From the moment it launched in 2005, Kijiji took off. It’s now alive and well in over 600 cities across Europe and Asia, as well as throughout the U.S.