Why did we call our business Pinvino?

I'm part of a small digital wine marketing business in Sweden called Pinvino. The name is not an accident. And it's become one of our most powerful assets. This is why...

That’s me at work in Stockholm at the offices of Pinvino. It’s a small digital marketing agency and platform for wine. You can see the name in the window (in reverse). I’m talking about Anima Chenin Blanc… which is fabulous.

If you’re not Swedish, you might not be too interested. After all, our job is to help raise the profile of wines available in Systembolaget, Sweden’s monopoly retailer.

But people do ask us why we called the business “Pinvino”. And why the logo is a penguin. This is something you might find interesting, useful, and even valuable no matter where you are. Or even whether or no you’re in wine.

For starters, it wasn't just because we liked Penguins. Although we do.

Getting a brand name right is vital. And I can’t understand why people seem to do it on a whim. I worked for Conviviality which was among the worst brand names I’ve ever heard. It’s hard to pronounce, it’s obvious, and unmemorable, and was chosen by a group of senior executives in a hurry, in a boardroom. So they said. The brand colour was chosen as it was the Chief Executive’s favourite. The business was the biggest corporate failure ever in the UK drinks business and wiped £800M off the stock market.

I’m not saying it was all the fault of the brand name. But I’m also not convinced it didn’t contribute.

So how did we choose Pinvino?