Question

Topic: Branding

What's In A Name?

Posted by mickey.griffith on 12/18/2008 at 1:05 PM ET 25 Points
Hello all,

Here is my dilemma.

The company has been in business for 30 years and even through last years gloom and doom media frenzy managed to maintain the same sales numbers as the previous year. Great mom and pop business that has done a fantastic job of delivering quality products/services to some notable clients.

We are getting ready to revamp their brand identity. The identity has not been updated in 30 years and really needs to.

The real issue: Their company name is the last name of the proprietor (they will be incorporating in the next year after 30 years of sole proprietorship). And his last name is difficult to spell.

I'm concerned that we're going to have an issue with the relaunched website if people are not able to spell the company name right. I'm counting on many visitors to come from an aggressive online marketing campaign so it will be through links, mostly, but the spelling thing is really an issue for me.

I don't want to lost those 30 years of history and branding though. The client is fairly open minded about it, which is nice, but I would need to make a very good argument for leading them into a name change.

All thoughts appreciated in advance. Thanks!
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by ilan on 12/18/2008 at 1:26 PM Accepted
    Successful old names have brand equity.
    Don't just get rid of them.
    JP Morgan died many years ago, the name is still on the door...
    Consider a transition period and plan carefully.
  • Posted on 12/18/2008 at 8:05 PM Accepted
    You could, of course, get the domain names for misspelled versions of the company name and just redirect to the correct-spelling domain. That would be my approach ... and it would be a lot less expensive than a name change (and all that entails).
  • Posted by Peter (henna gaijin) on 12/18/2008 at 9:14 PM Accepted
    I agree that you likely won't wan to drop the name, and also with Marcus that you can easily get the URLs for commonly mis-spelled versions of company names.

    For example, if you type amazn.com or amzon.com (and likely other common mis-spellings), you will be automatically forwarded to amazon.com
  • Posted by maryann on 12/19/2008 at 9:18 AM Accepted
    If it isn't broken, don't fix it.

    It takes so many years to build a solid brand, why toss out all that work? (No to mention previously invested dollars.)

    Purchase the misspelled domains and forward them to the correct one. If domain resolution is your only concern, that will take care of it. If you have other concerns, such as market perception of the name, then make that argument to your client, don't blame it on spelling.
  • Posted by mickey.griffith on 12/19/2008 at 12:02 PM Author
    Thank you for all the responses. It's those voices in my head that I don't always want to listen to. I think the misspelled urls are probably the best solution to me getting over my own hangup. I didn't want to lose the brand equity, so my brain was really in the right place. I do tend to over analyze sometimes. Thanks for setting me straight everybody.
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