Barbara Stopher Blog

According to Shakespeare: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Well, yes it would but how would you market it to gardeners and lovers? A name is an identifier, a shorthand designation that sets one person, product or service apart from another. And, as such, it does matter what that name is as it can either enhance the reputation of that to which it refers, or it can damage it absolutely.  Otherwise why did Marion Michael Morrison change his name to John Wayne?!

It’s the same in marketing. Your name is the first, and most important, part of your brand. A strong name helps you stand out and convey your brand values. A weak or inappropriate name can work against everything else you do to build a position for your offering. So it’s interesting to explore why some of today’s infamous brands started life with very dubious brand names:

• Google was launched in 1996 as BackRub. It was quickly (and thankfully) renamed by founders Larry Brin and Serge Page in 1998
• Pepsi-Cola was the brand name in 1898 for a product that had launched five years earlier as Brad’s Drink after a young American pharmacist called Caleb Bradham
• Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web was the original name for Yahoo, founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo. It was soon renamed to the acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”

And then there are those brand names that we all think are fine, only to have their powerful brand owners change them on us, usually with the intention of enhancing the brand’s global domination:

• In 1990 Mars changed the name of its popular peanut chocolate bar from Snickers to Marathon and eight years later did the same thing with fruit chews Opal Fruits, renaming them Starburst
• In 2001 Unilever chose to change the name of household cleaner Jif to Cif, apparently to help Hispanic and French speakers pronounce it better
• Only last year, the UK’s biggest insurer turned its back on its Norfolk roots to change its brand name from Norwich Union to Aviva

And now we have another contender as Charmin toilet tissue is dropped in favour of Cushelle, with its big cuddly bear icon morphing into a koala! The name change is part of an agreement made during SCA Hygiene’s acquisition of Charmin from Procter & Gamble in 2007.

Changing a brand name is not a cheap exercise, not forgetting the discarded consumer goodwill for the previous incarnation. So why do it? It all comes down to getting the long-term brand strategy right in the beginning. If you are already a global player, like Unilever or Procter & Gamble, you should really be thinking of appropriate global brand names at the outset and avoiding costly rebranding exercises further down the line.

It’s true that global branding can bring cost savings by producing a single global advertising and marketing campaign for all countries. But there is also a well-respected view that global branding can be counter-productive. Advertising campaigns produced by the so-called ‘lead’ market can look very alien in other markets. Often being dumbed down so as to minimize cultural differences, these global campaigns can appear bland and not relate directly to any market, giving local brands an advantage.

Another reason given for a brand name change is to distance the brand from a negative experience. Personally, I think this is misguided. It assumes we all have very short memories and cannot tie up the two identities. In this way, not only does the new brand bring its old baggage with it, but it also risks alienating us even further as we think they may be trying to get away with something! It is better to invest the resource that would have gone into establishing a new brand in overcoming the original brand’s difficulties.

So, the lesson is that a brand name should be for life and therefore deserves careful thought and planning to avoid future costly changes. Would a rose smell as sweet if it had been called a stinker?

According to a survey of 100 UK retailers by dotCommerce http://www.dotdigitalblog.com/ecommerce/464/ most retailers are failing to utilize social media to exploit the opportunities it offers to engage consumers. Nearly 60% of retailers have no social media presence at all! Even for the 42% that do use social media, only 32% with a Twitter or Facebook account are promoting this on their website and a mere 12% use more than one social media channel. For those that are using social media, Twitter is taking over from Facebook as the channel of choice. Retailers using Twitter are mainly using it for push marketing with 73% using it for announcing product updates, 62% for marketing and 58% to promote company news. It seems that neither large nor small retailers have embraced the idea of blogging with only 10% small and 6% large retailers having a blog.

It seems such a missed opportunity for retailers who are in the perfect position to identify their consumers and engage them via social media. Retailers should be engaging with customers to supply more of their needs and thereby secure a larger share of their expenditure. Farming their existing customers in this way would be a much more cost effective exercise than looking for new customers or, even worse, just waiting to see who wanders in!