What’s in a name?

We had been working with the UK’s leading ceiling manufacturer, Zentia for a while when they asked us to re-name their best-selling product range Dune eVo. But why when it’s a well-established market leader, with an enviably loyal customer base and delivers a significant % of the company’s sales. So YEAH – why change the name?? Not wanting to discourage a nice juicy brief but knowing the budget would need to cover everything from the actual name ideation to a launch campaign and rebranding of a gazillion support comms; from data sheets to SEO and packaging. So the objectives and the outcomes needed to be robust.

So why would you change a name?

Over the last few years we’ve developed something of a specialism in name change campaigns and there are a number of common scenarios that lead a business to decide they need a new one for their brand, category, product or service.

– Bad reputation

– Product improvements no longer reflected in the name

– To reignite interest

– Market conditions

– Contractual agreement

In the case of Zentia it was a contractual requirement and therefore simply had to be done. But that didn’t diminish the significant risks a name change campaign faces – you can quickly lose the loyalty you’ve worked (often years) to establish, increase the potential for customers to consider competitors and create confusion that in turn can easily impact sales.

What can you do to mitigate the negative and ensure a successful transition?

Obviously every scenario has its’ unique facets, but here’s a few things from our campaign playbook that tend to keep us in the clients good books.

Start with the new name – and build out. Have a strong rationale for the new name – it needs to make sense and have the strength to lead the campaign. You need to be able to say it – forget the made up, unpronounceable to any normal person ‘words’, in 99% of cases, you need something easy to recall and what we’re really after: something that taps into an all-important emotional connection.

Generate excitement – This is BIG news. So create curiosity and engagement through teaser content before thwacking your audience with strong, unique visual identifiers across all your channels

Be repetitive!! – Use every communication, every channel, every opportunity to be seen & heard. Remember, you’ll often be sick of itbefore your audience has even acknowledged it!

Be confident in the heritage – If you have positive brand equity in the ‘old’ name, use it unashamedly, for as long as you can get away with it.

Give consumers more – Use the name change as an opportunity to innovate. People might not like change, but they love new. Even if the driving reason for name change is legal, use it as a chance to contemporize the product or service – evidence of innovation delivers confidence you’re still the right choice and reduce the chances of considering competitors.

Make it easy – you’ve got to think through every avenue of the customer journey and automate as much as possible. No matter how many times or how loud you say the new name, some will use the old one! If they type in the old name, make the autocorrect VERY obvious so they get it right next time.

Easy?

Not at all, but as we proved with Dune eVo for Zentia, if you do it right, you can not only change the name successfully, but grow the brand at the same time.

In this case, the Dune eVo range became the Aruba range – a name derived from the Caribbean island, reflecting the distinctive sand finish of the products. The name gave us a rich creative platform to develop the brand narrative and a campaign rich in emotion.

Did it work?

Funnily enough given we’re sharing this case….Yes! We’ve changed habits of a lifetime with people now referring to Aruba after decades of specifying Dune eVo. What’s more, we have already successfully retained our market share and we’re also seeing interest in the extended product range; a key indicator of future growth.