Much has been written on the subject of brands – not least by B2B International! As we know, a brand is made up of many things – name, logo and values to name but a few. But can there be any doubt about the importance of a brand name? In a Thursday Night Insight article last year, Chrissie Douglas gave us some hints on selecting a brand name:

• Brand names should be simple so that they are easy to understand, pronounce and spell. Two words in the name should be considered the maximum.
• Brand names should be vivid in imagery so that the mnemonics present strong memory cues.
• Brand names should be familiar sounding so that much of the information to which the name relates is already stored in the mind.
• Brand names should be distinctive so that the word attracts attention and does not become confused with other brands.

So, what happens if you get it wrong?

According to research by YouGov/G2, Cillit Bang has been voted the UK’s most disliked brand name. Of the 2,000 British consumers surveyed, a quarter of women, a fifth of men and 27% of over-55s did not like the brand name. Yet, the cleaning brand, which was launched in 2005 by Reckitt Benckiser, is actually considered by its owner to be a “power brand” and its sales show it to be an extremely successful product. So, clearly, brand name is not everything.

Yet, of the top 10 most disliked brand names (shown below), four are new names for previously known brands, including 3 in the top 5:

1. Cillit Bang
2. Cif
3. Starbucks
4. Pasta Hut
5. Snickers
6. Veet
7. Accenture
8. Aldi
9. Plenty
10. Mates

Cif used to be known in the UK as Jif, Snickers was for many years called Marathon, and Veet previously went by the name Immac. This perhaps underlines the importance of getting the brand name right in the first place. Once people have started to associate certain values and attributes with a brand, any changes can lead to confusion or mistrust. Unless you recognise the importance of brands and adopt a well thought-out marketing and communications rebranding strategy, you could find yourself with a lot of brand rebuilding work to be done.

To find out more about branding, please refer to several of our white papers, including:

• What’s in a name?
• Branding in B2B markets
• The value of brands; how much are they worth?

Your employees are one of your company’s greatest assets. What they say about your company, how they act in the workplace, and how happy they are in their roles all impact on your brand, your image, your levels of service and ultimately your customers’ satisfaction. B2B Marketing recently published an article entitled BRANDING: Motivating employees to be your ‘brand carriers’. The article, which is shown below, makes interesting reading.

Many B2B companies have gone through mergers and takeovers, with the associated churn in staff, sense of insecurity, loss of implicit knowledge and know-how… So, more than ever, B2B companies need to re-address the way they interact with their employees. Positive interaction, fostering brand engagement, can have a massively beneficial impact on your company – and your bottom line.

1. Boost the role of employees in brand communications
   B2B companies’ employees are one of their most powerful assets and need to be recognised as such in any brand communications programme. Including an ‘employee engagement programme’ as a part of your brand plan is a good start. The role of the employee in branding the company is critical – whether it be sales, customer services, or technical support, all have direct customer interface. In effect, they are the brand.
2. Understand the networks that employees use
   Customers and suppliers form relatively small, interlinked professional worlds. Many of them know each other, often from previous employment positions. Markets talk, so it’s time to start listening to what your employees are saying about the company – document both the good and the not so good.
3. Get top management buy-in
   Bottom-up employee engagement initiatives only work if they are joined up with company strategy and senior management. Before spending masses on large-scale employee engagement surveys, give management a ‘weather check’ on the mood of the company, and pinpoint areas that need addressing.
4. Avoid stale jargon – be honest
   Whatever communication tools are used to engage employees – surveys, newsletters, web-casts, intranets, away-days with specialist consultants – it’s crucial that senior management avoid soundbites that sound like lipservice.
5. Address disconnects between company behaviour and communication
   Successfully communicating in today’s Web 2.0 world means addressing inherent distrust and cynicism. Honesty and transparency are important: how a company behaves rather than what it says sends out the strongest signal. If your company really is driven first and foremost by shareholder value, then admit that.
6. Reward honesty in feedback
   Many corporations tend not to interpret negative feedback in the right way, taking it as a way to sideline people who dare speak their minds. This needs to be addressed, otherwise potentially timid employees will be too frightened to voice their opinions.
7. Use social media for employee engagement
   Companies need to go beyond traditional one-way communication vehicles and embrace the world of modern, democratic and conversational-driven media. The industry networks that exist offline – industry events, forums, trade-fairs – are being complemented by these increasingly popular social media channels.
8. Consider hiring employee engagement professionals
   Corporations can get involved with their employees by hiring community engagement professionals, whose job it is to listen and engage within industry forums, read blogs, pick up where the company image is, and re-engage with individuals directly or with influential members of the group in question, to identify problem areas, address them and ensure that change wishes are followed up.
9. Define the experience you wish the customer to have
   In a world where product differentiation is increasingly difficult to achieve and maintain, aspects of service and experience branding – employee branding in this instance – are becoming ever more critical in making a difference. When the technical director or buyer of a client company is asked on a forum, or at an industry trade fair, by a previous colleague or acquaintance, “What are those people at Corporate X like to do business with?” you want them to give a positive picture.
10. Boost word-of-mouth
    What employees say about their company to friends is likely to carry huge weight – more weight indeed than an ad in a traditional B2B industry magazine or a new corporate brochure. If employee views are valued, companies can genuinely create enthusiasm that will spread through the organisation, impacting positively on a range of areas leading to enhanced customer satisfaction.

So maybe it’s time to switch the focus from the voice of the shareholder or the customer to the voice of the employee – the employee as brand ambassador.

• Find out how easy and cost effective it can be to monitor your staff satisfaction levels – click here.
• Read our white paper on employee satisfaction, Understanding and Developing your (People) Assets

There are many reasons why a company may wish to rebrand. The corporate history books are, however, littered with examples of large-scale renaming gone wrong.

At B2B International, we are strong advocates for testing perceptions to re-branding exercises with all key stakeholders within an organisation – Be they customers, shareholders, staff or any other party. Very often, the most effective means for this is through a thorough appraisal of one’s corporate positioning within the market.

The following article from last week’s Financial Times, highlights some of the success stories and failures in the world of branding and should make for interesting reading for anyone involved in the subject.

When rebranding can come back to haunt you

To some, Santander’s decision to rebrand Abbey and its other UK retail banking operations under a single banner marks yet another regrettable example of global businesses squeezing out local differences.

To others, the move is just good business by the Spanish banking group as at least one of the brands – Bradford & Bingley – is fatally stymied by failure and government rescue.

Aviva is another financial services operator which is currently spending millions advertising its original Norwich Union brand out of existence.

Mergers, takeovers, disasters and transformations in the nature of business all provide justification for corporate rebranding. The rebirth of Guinness and Grand Metropolitan in 1997 under the Diageo banner and BTR Siebe as Invensys in 1999 are examples.

But companies introducing or extending their brands do so at their peril.

Abbey itself, then under Luqman Arnold, chief executive, was forced into an embarrassing U-turn over the pastel-coloured, lower-case livery of its identity when it dropped the "National" from its name in a £11m rebranding in 2003. It soon reverted to a branding style close the Abbey National original.

British Airways also found itself at the centre of controversy when as part of a £60m rebranding in the 1990s it ditched its Union Flag tail-fins in favour of a range of multicultural designs which it was eventually forced to abandon.

Most embarrassing, perhaps, was the case of Royal Mail, which under the leadership of John Roberts followed the trend of adopting a Latinate name, Consignia, to distance its post office service from its old-fashioned, public sector roots.

Mr Roberts explained that Consignia described "the full scope of what the Post Office does in a way that the words ‘post’ and ‘office’ cannot". Within two years, the name was gone.

But Latinate names such as Aviva are thought to work well in being understood and recognisable in globalised markets, and have also been adopted by companies such as Andersen Consulting which renamed itself Accenture in 2001.

At least Accenture did not suffer the ridicule heaped upon PwC when its consultancy arm was briefly rebranded Monday – to signify the excitement of the weekly return to work.

And the subsequent demise of its former namesake Arthur Andersen in the wake of the Enron scandal made the name change particularly fortuitous.

Coca-Cola was also hit by a consumer backlash in 1985 when it rebranded its main cola line simply as "New Coke" – but was forced to retreat within months.

In spite of consumer complaints, some great British brands have been consigned to the marketing dustbin of history. Marathon and Opal Fruits now sell under their global names of Snickers and Starburst.

The imposition of a Spanish name on 25m UK banking customers may well pass without too much comment. But Mitsubishi found itself embarrassed when it introduced its "Pajero" – or Pampas cat – SUV model in the 1980s.

The name, a pejorative term in some Spanish-speaking countries, forced Mitsubishi to rebrand the car – known as the Shogun in UK – as the Montero in Spain and Latin America.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

In this week’s Thursday Night Insight, Chrissie Douglas reflects on a recent branding decision that has hit the national press and discusses the importance of good branding.

Whilst flicking through the Sunday papers dominated by doom, gloom and impending recession, a light-hearted article on a recent re-branding decision focused my attention.

The article in question described how Watercliffe Meadow primary school in Sheffield dropped the word ‘school’ in favour of a ‘place of learning’. The head teacher believed that the word ‘school’ has ‘negative connotations’ and that the traditional description sounded too ‘institutional’. At the same time, the local authority renamed many of the traditional school support services. For example, lollipop ladies became “school crossing patrol officers”, teachers are now known as “knowledge navigators”, libraries as “ideas stores” and dinner ladies as “education centre nourishment production assistants”!

On the one hand, the content of this article is light-hearted and funny but on the other hand, changing established names that have become almost institutionalised over hundreds of years borders on ridiculous. This focused my attention on the seriousness of the re-branding decision.

So what’s in a name? A brand name is the label by which people recognise something and when they think of that name some image or values are conjured up which are special and unique. These are often built up over many years as the name becomes a familiar front end to the values and perceptions associated with a particular company. The name becomes a reflection of what the company stands for.

Let’s consider a few examples. In March 2001, Royal Mail – the UK national postal service – changed its name to Consignia at a cost of £500,000. The brand lasted little over a year before public outcry forced the group’s return to its original Royal Mail signature at a further cost of £1 million.

What the Royal Mail failed to do was transfer the awareness and perceptions of the brand which had been built up over 400 years to the new name. That is, they failed to recognise that Brits are a proud, culturally-heritaged bunch and that centuries-old traditions and values were encapsulated in the name. Consignia had no association or meaning to the population, sounding more like an Italian airline or, ironically, an American branding consultancy. Not the sort of organisation the Queen would trust her correspondence with. However, if Royal Mail had been called Consignia when it was first created, would the company and its businesses be smaller or larger, or otherwise significantly different? The answer is probably not.

Other not so well known examples include the re-branding of Backrub to Google, and Marafuka to Nintendo. What makes these two examples different is that the brand names were changed prior to any large-scale commercial success or before the world established any values or associations with those terms. A reversion back to their original form is now near impossible as they are a fundamental part of our global vocabulary.

So the key message is that naming is not something to be taken lightly. In an ideal world the trick is to get it right first time. If you don’t get it right first time, it’s a lot more difficult to change once the name becomes established and the values, perceptions and identity of the company become entrenched and almost inseparable from the name.

That’s not to say that the successful re-naming of an established brand is impossible (there are a number of success stories – for example the creation of Aviva from the 200-year old Norwich Union and CGU insurance brands) though it is important to question whether it is really necessary (is it really necessary to replace the term ‘school’?). If it is, the trick is to transfer the good from the old brand to the new.

So how do you go about re-branding? Good branding is not about original thinking. It’s about focus, consistency and doing the right thing. Although there are no hard and fast rules, some criteria suggested by researchers as factors which affect the recall and recognition of names are as follows:

• Brand names should be simple so that they are easy to understand, pronounce and spell. Two words in the name should be considered the maximum.
• Brand names should be vivid in imagery so that the mnemonics present strong memory cues.
• Brand names should be familiar sounding so that much of the information to which the name relates is already stored in the mind.
• Brand names should be distinctive so that the word attracts attention and does not become confused with other brands.

B2B International is an expert in branding and re-branding, and has developed a unique and tested model for analysing and building a strong corporate position that has been endorsed by some of the largest companies in Europe and the US. To learn more about how B2B International can help you, contact our Branding Research Team.