What's in a name?

A company’s name, as any IP professional will tell you, can make or break customer reaction and market success. Perhaps that’s why it’s so difficult for IP-related organisations to settle on a suitable title, says Richard Brass

Companies change their names for any number of reasons. Sometimes they want to freshen up their image and be down with the kids. Sometimes they want to identify with their best products, or reflect plans to move into new areas. And now and then they realise they’ve done something terrible, and want to ensure the incoming mud sticks to the old name.

Whatever the motivation it’s a very big deal, and the problem is that no one really knows how to do it. Sadly there is no secret formula for coming up with a snappy title that gets across the ideas of corporate strength, dazzling innovation, youthful energy, mature experience, financial propriety, customer care, human warmth and rat cunning; one that’s catchy, easy to say, looks good on letterheads and sponsorship material, and that nobody else is using.

Plenty of people pretend there is such a formula and earn themselves beachside homes and classic cars by convincing others that they know it, which is why fretful executives in the middle of big corporate overhauls happily dump the problem in the hands of these masters of mystery and think their troubles are over.

But however many presentations on brand equity, positioning and mental space you listen to and however much Issey Miyake your consultants wear, in the end your guess is really as good as theirs. They have no control over the public response to what finally comes out of the pipe and, like you, all they can do is sit back and hope it doesn’t stink.

And sometimes it certainly doesn’t. Would you turn to the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company for your high-tech stationery needs? Probably not, but 3M carries just the right note of efficient modernity. Some scoffed when BT Wireless was relabelled as O2, but before long the new name came to be admired for its cool, youthful tone and, helpfully, it was so clearly disconnected from the parent company that the business could easily be hived off and sent on its way.

‘THE RELABELLING OF PWC CONSULTING AS MONDAY WAS “THE RIGHT FIT FOR A COMPANY THAT WORKS HARD TO DELIVER RESULTS”. BUT THIS WAS ONE RESULT THAT DIDN’T DELIVER, AND THE NAME WAS RETIRED JUST SIX WEEKS LATER’

When Arthur Andersen Consulting was ordered to change its name as part of a court settlement in a long-running dispute with Arthur Andersen, the choice of the name Accenture was widely derided as an example of business-babble taking the place of honest labelling. But shortly afterwards, the collapse of Arthur Andersen over Enron made choosing a name so different from its tainted former parent seem a prescient move.

On the flip side
But if it does go wrong, it goes very wrong. The renaming of the UK Post Office as Consignia is one of the great branding goofs of recent times. It was soon rebadged as the Royal Mail Group, but not without lasting damage to some very big reputations. When the UK Department of Trade and Industry decided to reflect its changing role by giving itself the new title of the Department for Productivity, Energy and Industry, a storm of derision led to the old name being restored within a week. And the relabelling of PwC Consulting as Monday was, said the CEO, ‘the right fit for a company that works hard to deliver results’. But this was one result that didn’t deliver, and the name was retired just six weeks later.

All of which goes some way towards explaining the nervousness of the UK’s intellectual property authority when it was time for a rename to reflect its changing role. In April 2007, out went the Patent Office, to be replaced by the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO), which was ditched in turn last November in favour of the Intellectual Property Office (IPO).

Along with the reprinting of stationery and the screwing on of new nameplates, there’s no saying what kind of anguished head-scratching and late nights were involved in these momentous changes at the IPO, and it’s hard not to be a little sympathetic. But let’s hope they’ve got it nailed this time, because if they don’t know who they are then there’s not much hope for the rest of us.


Richard Brass is a columnist for The Times. He writes on business issues for The Daily Telegraph and is a former editor of Punch


This article first appeared in IP Review, issue 25