Brand Name Birth: How Stow 'n Go

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02-03-2005, 11:48 PM

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Brand Name Birth: How Stow 'n Go

Brand Name Birth: How Stow 'n Go became a Chrysler group standard

MARY CONNELLY | Automotive News
Posted Date: 2/3/05
In late October 2003, Chrysler group CEO Dieter Zetsche scanned a piece of paper before he boarded a flight to a business meeting.

It had five handwritten words or phrases: Stow 'n Go, Flexeo, Versatec, All-Store and Transeo. Zetsche circled the first and handed the paper back to his assistant.

A brand name was born.

Today, customers routinely walk into Dodge and Chrysler showrooms and ask for a Stow 'n Go minivan, not a Grand Voyager or a Town & Country, company executives say.

Stow 'n Go models have second- and third-row seats that fold flat into the floor. Vehicles with the feature went on sale in February 2004.

"Stow 'n Go is a brand by itself," says Gary Dilts, the Chrysler group's senior vice president of sales.

Last week, the automaker began building Stow 'n Go models in a second assembly plant because demand has outpaced sales projections.

Quick decision

The Chrysler group bypassed its traditional naming process when it christened Stow 'n Go, says Ann Fandozzi, director of Chrysler Jeep product planning and marketing.

The automaker spent $400 million and in 18 months overhauled its minivans.

"The naming was abbreviated as well," Fandozzi says.

The name emerged from an hour-long brainstorming lunch in early September 2003 in the Chrysler group's employee cafeteria.

Fandozzi, Susan Thomson, the Chrysler group's senior manager of family vehicle marketing, and marketing researcher Marcie Greenfield wanted to convey exactly what the seating feature did.

"Stow 'n Go came up in our very first brainstorming session and was our first choice," Fandozzi says.

Viagra model

When marketers name a product, they choose either a descriptive word or a word that can be layered with emotion, Fandozzi says. Choosing a name such as Kleenex or Xerox and building an emotional identity around it is more common than using a descriptive name such as Stow 'n Go, she says.

The Chrysler group called in Interbrand, a New York naming firm that coined the drug name Viagra.

"We said, this is so important that we should get some of the emotional names on the table," Fandozzi says.

Interbrand offered three top choices: Flexeo, Phoenix and Versatec.

"Stow 'n Go still remained our favorite," Fandozzi says.

The Chrysler group was conducting its final round of product research on minivans with the seating feature. It consulted 1,000 minivan owners and intended buyers.

"We pulled out some of the people into focus groups on names," Fandozzi says. "Everybody liked Stow 'n Go."

The Stow 'n Go name did not go before the executive committee that reviews names at the Chrysler group. With time running out, Fandozzi put the top five picks before Joe Eberhardt, the Chrysler group's executive vice president of global sales and marketing, and George Murphy, senior vice president of global brand marketing. The two executives concurred on the finalists.

At the Chrysler group, Zetsche has the final say in naming.

Internally, the Chrysler group described the seating feature as "fold-in-floor." Zetsche wanted to use the marketing name in a product demonstration to the company's dealers. He was handed the list of names before he left for the meeting.

"He circled Stow 'n Go, and we were off and running," Fandozzi says.

The Chrysler group promotes Stow 'n Go with its own logo. It uses the name in all minivan advertising. It affixes a Stow 'n Go badge to each vehicle that includes the feature.

Last year, the Chrysler group sold 386,664 minivans. That figure was up 3.2 percent from 2003.

-Matt-