WHAT'S IN A NAME?

What's in a name? Well quite a lot really. For a start it immediately identifies it's owner. But it does much, much more than that. Whether the name is of a person or place or anything else, the very instant you think of a name you also fill your mind with the circumstances surrounding your association with that name. Remember those in your class at school? You do? Then you are also thinking about the good times and the bad times associated with them. How you admired the one who always got it right and how much you detested the class bully. How you made and changed friends as you grew older. By now you'll be remembering the names of teachers at the school too and the influence they had on you at the time and since. What about your first job and all the people you worked with, remember them? And of course there's all the famous people you admired so much, film stars, pop singers, football players and the rest. All names you will never forget and that will trigger memories for the rest of your life, some good, some not so good.

Then of course there are the names that stride across the pages of history, Kings and Queens, politicians, scientists, artists of all sorts, religious leaders, and the rest. You may not remember their faces but you'll know their names and probably why they were famous…or infamous. All will have that special something that links them with your memory. The names of places you have been will conjure images of your visit, the names of the films and shows you enjoyed so much will remind you of the actors or the music. All your senses are spurred into action by one name or another and the name does the rest.

It is the same with products and services. You have your favourites in everything and those who sell those branded items are well aware of the power held by a name. Gathering information on such matters has become a very sophisticated part of the marketing mix, think of 'Loyalty Cards', every time one is used it tells someone all about the purchaser. Likes, dislikes, preferences, and willingness to try something new, all are recorded and form part of the marketing intelligence necessary to stay one step ahead. Any new product or service will have been the subject of intense discussion for a very long time before the name is agreed. It will have been tried out on carefully constructed focus groups, then test marketed to try to establish if the markets at which it is aimed will accept it. Only after all this research will a major new name be launched and huge amounts of money spent on building the new name in it's market place. Many of those names have lasted for decades, others flashed across the marketing sky like comets and vanished into the ether or wherever. Some products bear the names of their creator, making not only the product famous but the maker too. Others carry the name of the company founder with the same result. They will all be instantly recognisable and each will have an image or an association with every individual that, though basically the same, will differ in everyone's mind to a greater or lesser degree.

Bearing all this in mind it was with some surprise that I have noted over the past few years the fashion to change well known and respected names into new and usually unrecognisable words rather than names. Think of Norwich Union, everyone knows they are an old, reliable, and trusted name in the insurance business, now the TV ads tell me they are called Aviva! What on earth does that mean? It sounds more like a rallying cry from Che Guevara than the name of a company asking you to invest your future with them. Abbey National and the other place named building societies they own are now to be called Santander. Even Marks and Spencer have joined the rush and are using M & S instead. Thames Valley Water has become Veolia, I ask you…. Veolia! and our power supplier has become E-ON… Why? Everyone knows the name of the company they deal with, why the rush to change them all? These are only some of the most recent and obvious changes of name I happen to have noticed. There are of course a lot more, some of which to my mind border on the ridiculous. It seems crazy to me that after spending a fortune establishing a brand name, companies are now spending even more trying to change them. Yes! Yes! I know dinosaurs don't understand all these clever new ways of doing things….but it might just be worth remembering that it was those very dinosaurs that created and built those brand names and the long, proud histories associated with them and it wasn't the dinosaurs that sent the banks skint! Will the new names last as long or achieve the same distinction as those they are replacing? I very much doubt it!