When to Consider A Brand Name Change

I love brand naming. There, I said it – and I mean it! Of all the things we do at Finch Brands, naming is neither the easiest nor the most linear. Even the best-run naming process is almost necessarily ‘messy,’ yet leading our naming team is among the most stimulating and satisfying facets of my role here. In this blog series, I’ll share some of our philosophies and best practices – and while you may not come to love naming as I do, I’ll be satisfied if it helps you even a little bit : )

While some of my love for naming is historical (been doing it since the mid-1990s) and some is undoubtedly based on unique wiring (I’m drawn to words and big brand ideas), naming also dovetails nicely with Finch Brands’ quest for impact. As a real-world brand consultancy, our Purpose is ‘To Help Brands Win When It Matters Most.’ And given that our brand name change strategy work tends to revolve around brands at important junctures facing fundamental questions, there is no better venue for impact than a naming process. Plus, while a brand name can’t say everything, it often ‘calls the tune’ for the brand we build around it – it’s visible, foundational, and important.

At Finch Brands, our brand name change consulting work is largely focused on medium-to-large organizations in transition – thus, before any naming process begins we’re often tasked with a key brand name change strategy question: ‘Do we need a new name?’ Given what we do for a living, it may surprise you to know that the threshold for a ‘yes’ answer is high – often, we’re counseling clients to maintain an existing name yet enliven their brand via refresh of other key artifacts (messaging, logo, design, etc.).

In order to answer that key strategic question – ‘Do we need a new name?’ – we use the following rubric: to get to a ‘yes’ answer, at least one of the following three things must be affirmative:

1. Does your brand name suffer from reputational damage or misalignment?

In extreme situations, some brand names change because of high profile scandals or tragedies (think Anderson Consulting/Accenture, ValuJet/AirTran, Philip Morris/Altria) – fairly obvious cases.

Yet we tend to face more nuanced situations – clients whose businesses have grown beyond what the original name/context conveys or who may feel stuck for other reasons. At such moments, our first step is usually to conduct brand equity assessment research to document how colleagues and customers regard the brand and for what it stands. Only with data (as a complement to the understandably emotional nature of this topic) can we make a confident recommendation.

2. Is the market shifting in ways that may make your brand name obsolete?

The classic example here is Verizon, which came out of the merger of GTE and Bell Atlantic in 2000. Both companies were old-line phone companies and, while neither brand was damaged, the future of telephony was mobile. It is likely that, given the heritage, neither brand was well-positioned to assert leadership in a changing market. Hence, Verizon was born – combining the Latin root ‘ver-‘ for true and ‘-izon’ to convey the future. A thoughtful name – and billions of marketing dollars! – helped create a new industry leader. A more contemporary example – with mixed results so far – is the conversion from Facebook (a very specific social network) to Meta (a broader concept).

3. Are there cultural/transactional reasons to consider a new name?

This consideration is typically limited to our work in M&A situations (for us, a high percentage of the time!), when multiple existing brand names come together to form a new, broader company. Two recent examples:

• We worked on the merger of Practice Velocity and DocuTAP, the two leading EMR (and more) providers to the urgent care industry. Given this convergence, it made strategic sense to move to one name – yet, for a variety of reasons, elevating one of these successful brands over the other would be alienating to teammates and customers alike. Long story short, we crafted the name ‘Experity’ to convey a focus on patient/provider experiences with the ‘-ity’ suffix evoking key values like integrity, dexterity, agility, etc.

• Similarly, two beloved Midwest health systems – Bellin and Gundersen – agreed to merge. While our research indicated that both were highly regarded in their geographies, the vision called for structural integration and cross-pollination to create a brighter future. As such, while the legacy identities will be maintained over a careful migration process, we crafted the new identity ‘Emplify’ to express the galvanizing principle of ‘empathy amplified,’ the core/shared philosophy that unifies the team and underlies the brand.

So, unless one of these questions is answered with ‘yes,’ it is likely not worth the risk/expenditure of changing a brand name – those risks will be our next topic as the naming blog series rolls on!