Five lessons from corporate branding and rebranding efforts
What should be in a business name? Whatever can make it easily recognizable to your customers and potential customers. Here are five lessons from previous branding and rebranding efforts that can help guide you.
1) Don't fix what's not broken.
In 1985, Coca-Cola learned not to tamper with a beloved brand when it decided to re-stage its legendary brand with “New Coke.” The public was outraged. They wanted their old Coke, a quintessential icon in American popular culture. Coke responded within a few months and brought back Classic Coke. Classic Coke sales rebounded. Although New Coke remained on the market, it eventually faded from store shelves.
2) Expansion may require a bigger umbrella.
International Harvester changed its name to Navistar International when it sold its farm equipment business and entered the truck, diesel engine and bus markets. Although the name is “made up,” it broadened the brand and has strong connotations of movement and direction. As a 2013 company report stated, “Navistar was selected as a name with a strong sound, a resonance to Harvester, and a connection to its root words, "navigate" and "star." It does all of those things and has since become the name of the holding company over multiple divisions.
3) Respect your heritage, but don't let it get in the way of making your brand relevant and compelling.
Our company, Miller Felpax, had been family owned since its inception more than 60 years ago. The Miller heritage could not be lost, particularly because his founding products were innovative for their time. However, the full name didn't have the same meaning as it once did, so we changed one word to encapsulate aspects of our culture, operating philosophy, and customer service: "ingenuity." This name placed the company in the middle of the position we wanted to occupy in the minds of current and future customers: an ingenuous company.
4) Names have to be understandable.
In the beginning, it was unclear why Jeff Bezos would name a bookseller website Amazon. The story goes that that he named it after the river, of course, because of its size. An early logo consisted of a large “A” shape with a river-like line running down the middle. And the tagline was: “Earth's biggest bookstore.” Bezos' ambitions were as large as the company name, and he eventually developed a business model that would include far more than books. The name continues to fit this ecommerce giant. No wonder there's a smile in the logo.
Other names can be just plain difficult to figure out. Philip Morris renamed itself Altria when it was trying to reposition itself more as a food marketer and less as a tobacco company. What's an “altria?" That's not intuitively understandable.
5) Avoid initials.
Unless you're a big player with an enormous marketing budget, such as IBM, GE or SAP, avoid brand names that are merely initials. If your initials are well established in the market, you must still ensure your tagline delivers a branded proposition or benefit. Consider SAP, which is dominant in the enterprise market and complements its small and mid-sized business targets with the lines: “The Best Run Companies Run SAP” and “Run Better.” SAP has evolved its tag lines multiple times to reflect marketing objective and market needs.
Steve Blue is president and CEO of Miller Ingenuity, a railway components parts provider based in Winona, Minn. Contact him through www.StevenlBlue.com.
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