Question
I am working with a really successful health/wellness brand, and I have been helping them with an overhaul, part of which has been to develop a new name: "[brand name] Wellness."
They have five verticals across the organization, which are:
1. "medical" - which is the area that actually see patients and clients
2. "athlete" - deals with world-class athletes, consults on performance
3. "c-suite" - deals with high-powered CEOs and executives from large companies
4. "fitness" - gym and training vertical (they have a large gym)
5. "health" - products: supplements, and other health and fitness-related items
Here's my struggle: The team has said that, overall, the brand is about "wellness" and we've settled on using the term "Wellness" as part of the legal name of the mother brand: "[brand name] Wellness".
But to me, putting "wellness" on the end of the mother-brand name sometimes sounds too much like just another one of the five verticals... each of which will probably have the mother name at the beginning, also ... but maybe not.... so I've been torn about what to do...
The other option is to simply use only the new brand name, without the "Wellness" as the second word.
But then we have another problem: it might be difficult to figure out exactly what the company does without a qualifier like "wellness."
Any help appreciated very much. If you feel you have specific expertise in this area, please let me know and I'll consider a call with you for sure. Thank you.
Answer
This is indeed a tricky challenge, and you've articulated it well. However, without knowing the missing element ("brand name" / "mother name"), it's hard for me to give you specific guidance.
Does the brand name itself suggest health and wellness (as, for example, "Hygieia Wellness" might), or is it arbitrary (as with Oscar Health, the insurance company) or even fanciful/coined (e.g., AbbVie)? Each of these directions might dictate a different naming architecture.
I'd also want to know how the sub-brands will be identified and promoted. How much interplay will there be among the five verticals?
Finally, how were the five verticals identified under the old company name? Is there an advantage to maintaining the prior sub-brand naming system?
Without that knowledge, I can only comment that "Wellness" has general, umbrella-brand connotations and does not sound "too much like just another one of the five verticals," which are quite narrowly defined.
One last thing: I would caution you and your client about #5 ("health"), which does have a semantic overlap with "wellness." Perhaps this vertical deserves a more clearly commerce-related name -- XYZ Wellness Store, for example.
Happy to chat on a call if you'd like to go into this further!
