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Actimel

Senseo

Vivera

Tendem

TinQ

Interpolis

Danone, known for its commitment to health and nutrition, was ready to shake up the market with a new probiotic drink to meet the rising demand for foods that are not just good for you but actually work to improve your health. Danone needed a name that could carry this promise in a unique and ownable way.

Danone&#039;s ambition was clear. Strategically, they needed to own this new category. In terms of communications, that meant that everyone needed to understand how this product is new and different, and that Danone is the brand that cares to provide this kind of products. Legally, this meant that Danone needed a wordmark that spreads this message and works as a carrier of future brand value. How do you decide on a name that does exactly this?

More than just a drink

Globrands got to work, and Actimel was born. It&#039;s a name that strikes you with energy—the &quot;Acti&quot; part gets you thinking of action, of moving, of doing. And the &quot;mel&quot; rounds things off with a smooth, sweet tone. Just what you need to start the day right.

Actimel, a name that moves you

But it wasn&#039;t just the drink that got a name. The special probiotic cultures inside needed to stand out, too. Enter Lactobacillus Casei Defensis and Immunitas —names that sound as strong as they work. More than ingredients, they&#039;re the heroes in every bottle.

What's inside counts: meet your gut's new best friends

Actimel did not only hit the shelves; it took over breakfast tables in over 20 countries, earning over €1500 million a year. From Europe to South America, it is now much more than just a drink; it&#039;s a global health habit.

The impact: sip by sip, a global sensation

Actimel&#039;s story shows how much a name can do. Because it&#039;s not just what&#039;s in the bottle that matters; it&#039;s about defining your space in the hearts and minds of your audience. At Globrands, we&#039;re all about finding those perfect words that make a brand not just something you buy but something you believe in. A strong verbal identity lays down the groundwork for a special, one-of-a-kind bond with your audience through the power of language.

The might of naming right

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A wordmark that now stands for a global health habit

Coffee company Douwe Egberts and Philips developed a coffee brewing system that delivers fresh, individual doses of coffee quickly and tastes delicious at the same time. The coffee that comes out has a creamy top layer. Their working name was Caffè Crema.

Globrands recommended to name it Senseo. Ten years later, Sara Lee bought 50% ownership of the Senseo trademark from Philips for 170 million euros.

At first, DE only assigned Globrands to develop the international name for the coffee bags, which resulted in the very descriptive and easy to understand term ‘coffee pad’.At a later date, Globrands was engaged to develop the name for the whole concept.Ease of use and the creamy taste were seen as essential attributes of the concept, leading to Caffè Crema as the preferred name.Globrands then recommended that these characteristics were too functional to use as a base for a brand name. This new brand should be able to stand alone as a category by itself and possibly contain a multitude of underlying elements. That&#039;s why we recommended to let the name focus on the experience, and less on the product.

The name that eventually met all juridical, linguistic and conceptual criteria, was ‘Senseo’. It sounds Italian, but for everyone in the world it is easy to pronounce and remember. It references to feeling, tasting and smelling. In this context, the simple form and the ‘-eo’ suffix create a feeling of individuality.The word ‘Crema’ was initially added to give an immediate impression of the primary benefits of the new concept. It was then to be excluded as soon as the name Senseo was established enough to speak for itself.Senseo has become an international cultural icon and a huge commercial success.

A simple wordmark standing for a revolutionary story

Naming the experience (and not the product)

How do you bring flavour and optimism to a food category that is still struggling at the time?

Encko, originally established in 1960 as &#039;Eerste Nederlandse Keurslagers Combinatie,&#039; began its journey focused solely on the meat industry. However, in the 1980s, founder Arnold Veerman foresaw the rising demand for vegetarian alternatives and pivoted towards developing soybean-based meat substitutes.

While these early products were nutritionally rich, they lacked flavor. At the time, vegetarianism was still a niche market, and mediocre taste was often accepted. Vegetarian meatballs, burgers, and schnitzels were mainly sold through health food shops, with labels like biodynamic, organic, and bio.Recognizing the need for broader appeal, Arnold enlisted Globrands to help create a brand name and positioning strategy that would enable global development.

When veggie was really niche and spartan

The brief was clear: the name should have international potential, focusing on the mission of promoting healthy, plant-based food options. It needed to resonate with people leading sustainable, vibrant lifestyles, both health and environmentally conscious.The result was &#039;Vivera,&#039; a name derived from the Latin words &#039;vivere&#039; (life) and &#039;vera&#039; (true). This name was met with enthusiasm for its worldly, tasty, and optimistic connotations. In 1990, Encko introduced the Vivera brand to Dutch supermarkets, making it one of the first meat substitute brands on the market.

Worldly, tasty and optimistic

A significant milestone in Vivera&#039;s history was the development of the world&#039;s first plant-based steak. This innovation propelled Vivera into international markets, and today, Vivera products are available in over 25,000 supermarkets across 25 European countries.For consumer acceptance, Vivera&#039;s current products still resemble traditional meat products, using familiar terms like &#039;chicken,&#039; &#039;hamburgers,&#039; and &#039;schnitzel.&#039; However, Vivera is looking to the future, planning to create protein products that move beyond meat analogies and will feature unique names.Vivera continues to prove that sustainable food can be delicious, innovative, and globally embraced.

In the frontline, then and today

Living proof that we name for the future

Working with AI alone is rarely the time-saver it promises to be. Results come fast, but they&#039;re often unreliable and rarely tailored to the specific needs of professionals in research, intelligence, automation, content creation, or design. The work still has to be checked, corrected, and finished by a human.Toloka, a unit of Nebius Group NV, has spent years on the other side of that problem. As a leading provider of specialised data annotation and model refinement for frontier AI developers, Toloka works with large pools of human domain experts: physicists, scientists, lawyers, software engineers. They know exactly what AI gets wrong, and exactly what expert humans bring to the table.That vantage point gave Toloka something rare: the ability to launch a genuinely new category. Not another AI tool, and not a traditional consultancy, but a platform where AI and dedicated human experts work side by side to deliver pitch decks, client research, competitor intelligence, articles, and social content that professionals can actually use.

The case for a new category

Claiming a new category in a crowded, fast-moving, global market places unusual demands on a name. It has to communicate clearly what sets the offering apart, the pairing of AI and experts, without sounding like just another AI brand in an already saturated field. And it has to be distinctive enough to own as a wordmark for the long term, in a category where new entrants appear weekly.Clarity and distinction usually pull in opposite directions. Descriptive names are clear but generic. Invented names are distinctive but empty. The brief was to find a name that did both at once.

The naming brief: clarity and distinction

We looked for word parts that could carry the story in a vivid, figurative way rather than spell it out. Hundreds of routes were explored and narrowed. Trademark and domain availability checks ran in parallel from the start, ensuring nothing collided with existing marks in the client&#039;s field. It&#039;s the kind of pre-screening that quietly removes around nine in ten promising candidates before they ever reach a client meeting.The route that won fuses two ordinary words into one new one: ten and tandem.Tandem carries the central idea: two parties moving forward together, in sync, each contributing something the other can&#039;t. Ten is the score at the end, the mark of work done right. Together, in a single coined word, they tell the story of the platform: human and AI in tandem, scoring tens.The name is short, ownable, easy to say in any market, and visibly different from the AI-suffixed and -prefixed names crowding the category. It works as a wordmark and as a domain, tendem.ai, where the category descriptor sits naturally in the URL.

The route to Tendem

Most names enter an existing world. A few arrive at the start of a new one. Tendem is built for the second job.The pairing of AI and human experts is still a young idea, and the language around it has not settled. Tendem doesn&#039;t try to name the category itself; it does something more useful. It signals, in a single short word, that this is a different kind of offering: not another AI tool, but a new pairing with its own logic. Clients meeting Tendem for the first time recognise immediately that they are looking at something new, even before they know exactly what to call it.That recognition is the head start. A name that tells the market &quot;this is something else&quot; gives Toloka room to define the category in its own terms as it grows.

The opening of a category

The very cool and distinctive visual identity was developed by <a href="https://verveagency.com">Verve</a>, our strategic visual branding sister at United Playgrounds.

Visual identity: Verve | United Playgrounds

A name for the perfect pairing of AI and human experts

What do you call a new brand of unmanned petrol stations that allows users to fill up smartly and conveniently?

Shell was going to launch unmanned filling stations in the Dutch market under a new brand. Fuel would be offered here for considerably less than the recommended retail price. Another advantage was that there would no longer be queues in front of the cash register, as payment would be made directly at the pump.

The assignment was to develop a name for these unmanned petrol stations as a stand-alone brand separate from Shell. It was to convey brandvalues like inexpensive, fast and simple. In addition, it should exude a combination of dynamism, warmth and strength.

A name for a stand-alone brand

TinQ is a simple, fresh and cheerful name, with links to refuelling and thinking.TinQ has now been acquired by Gulf Oil and is now part of the Enviem group. With more than 325 locations in the Netherlands, Belgium and and Germany, TinQ has become an international brand and the market leader in the Netherlands.

Market leader

A clever name for clever filling stations

Insurance companies are not known for their clear communication. Except Interpolis, whose brand essence is 'crystal clear'. For more than 20 years, this has been the guiding principle in everything they do. So what does that mean for the naming of their offerings?

Co-designed by Globrands, Interpolis has incorporated strategy into their naming as soon as they embraced clarity as their main differentiator. All their naming is descriptive - but distinctive within the insurance world.Interpolis offering names follow a format that lets them clearly describe the product&#039;s function or purpose, but in wording you don&#039;t find in dictionaries like that. For clarity&#039;s sake and Interpolis being a Dutch company, all names are in Dutch.This leads to Globrands-created names like Alles-In-Eén polis (All-In-One policy)for a comprehensive insurance package, or the BuitenDeDeur insurance for property during outdoor activities. ZorgCompact and ZorgActief are slightly different health insurance policies and AutoModus is a care insurance policy.We call this kind of descriptive names in a distinctive language format semi-descriptive names. In this context, it has several advantages.<h3>Clarity for consumers</h3>Semi-descriptive names like these give consumers an immediate idea of what the product is for, making it easier for them to understand relevance and added value.<h3>Product differentiation</h3>Each product name is still unique and differentiates the product from other providers in the market, helping consumers make an informed choice.<h3>Brand extension</h3>This strategy provides flexibility to easily add new products to the range with a new descriptive name without weakening the Interpolis brand.

This form of naming has created its own brand language that is recognisable to Interpolis and contributes to its brand strength and Interpolis&#039; core value of &#039;Crystal Clear.&#039; Clear aligned naming that makes it easy for consumers to choose by quickly understanding the function and added value of each product, while new products can easily be added without weakening the Interpolis brand.The exclusive partnership between Rabobank and Interpolis, both part of the Achmea Group, further strengthens this strategy.

Naming manual

A naming manual that lives up to Interpolis' brand strategy

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One of a brand's most consequential decisions is the language its future is built on. Proprietary language that carries the brand through all its growth stages. We are a specialist brand naming and verbal identity consultancy: through verbal strategy, naming and validation, we create language that organisations can own and grow with across markets, cultures and languages. Our approach is rooted in hundreds and hundreds of projects that have resulted in brand naming you encounter every day. Both at work and on your grocery list.