Ah, the old rebrand ploy. It’s not unusual to find corporate renaming on a list of ‘make a mark’ options for a new Marketing Director or CEO. Corporate (re)naming requires a very different approach to naming a new sub-brand or product due in great part to considerations of and impact on culture. A company name carries with it the face of the business and the professional identity of its people, plus a raft of internal and external perceptions and years (perhaps decades) of equity and meaning from being ‘out there’.
As a namer, a corporate renaming exercise is a peach of a brief, necessitating a forensic examination of the business plan, culture and the perspectives of all stakeholder groups. The sort of thing that gets me out of bed with a brand-bounce and a desire to read the full classification of trade mark classes twice before brekky…. well, not really. What is interesting is the bit before anyone thinks about creating the brief. The ‘do you really need to do this?’ phase. Yes, a good naming consultant should be asking that and initially adopting an interrogator’s view that renaming the company may not be a smart or necessary move. In other words, play devil’s advocate to the bright renaming light bulb.
Lots has been written on the circumstances under which corporate renaming should be a consideration – less on the circumstances under which it should not. When should renaming the company be pulled apart, interrogated, broken down in to a series of go/no go criteria, even relegated to the corporate strategy bin?
A few potential red flags….
The CEO / Marketing Director has been in the business less than 6 months. The minimum threshold for listening to internal and external stakeholders and taking the temp of the brand.
Someone on the Board says they “don’t like the name”. Not yet relevant, until its effectiveness as one part of the overall brand mix (or not) has been researched.
Marketing says “nobody knows what it means”. This could be a symptom of ineffective communications rather than the name per se (start point – a review of the marcoms plan for next 12-18 months, including understanding how much budget is targeted at telling the narrative and building brand perception rather than the tactical stuff).
“People think it’s not very attractive / not very accessible”. Holistic audience engagement review – build accessibility at the right time via the right channels and the name will follow.
Research shows there’s actually a positioning or some other kind of market strategic problem, for which blame does not sit with the name per se. Review the positioning if evidence points towards it and of course sign off on nothing until it’s accompanied by a decent roll out and execution plan. Visual identity review may become part of this, not necessarily the name.
These 5 are just some of the key questions that might put a slow on the nuclear option of corporate renaming to cover up other less appetising problems that can seem harder. Corporate renaming is actually really hard work and expensive too – creative/strategic resource, trade mark resource, internal and external comms to inform all stakeholders, inevitable visual identity review, a launch plan and a whole new story to tell and build.
There are situations where corporate renaming absolutely makes sense of course. For example where there is a fundamental business strategy tension, or an insurmountable commercial, legal or cultural obstacle…..what others?
