Never forget where you came from

In a very early post on this blog - over seven years ago, gulp! - I bemoaned the change of name from Norwich Union to Aviva. This change was accompanied by some kind of ballyhoo about 'outgrowing our name.' I note, with amusement, that Aviva still sponsors Norwich City Football Club. Maybe they will push the football club to change their name to Aviva FC.

And that's just the point. The global brands that are football clubs, from Real Madrid to Chelsea to Bayern München don't change their names. Even if they only have one player who comes from anywhere near their named city, they don't forget where they came from.

Part of the (good) reason for this is that while we may have global brands, there is no such thing as a global customer. People live in markets.

I've recently noticed a brand undergoing the reverse procedure. This really was a brand that got too big for its boots - the Royal Bank of Scotland, who at some point decided to rebrand as RBS, as the name Royal Bank of Scotland was considered 'too parochial' for a global bank. Well, after years of criticism, crisis and bail-outs, the RBS branding is to be removed from branches in England, Scotland and Wales. The England and Wales branches will operate under the name Williams & Glyn, while the Scottish branches will go back to the original name.

I'm pleased to see that this accompanies a refocus back on UK retail banking after all the high-blown global ideas. The new CMO, David Wheldon, has a great track record, so let's hope he can help to salvage what was once a trusted high street bank.

In the end, maybe the Avivas and RBS's of the world (what memorable brand names!) could learn from some of the giants in branding. Has IKEA ever forgotten its Swedish origins? Has Apple ever pretended it came from some imaginary global place?

I don't think so.

A Good Gestalt

I'm probably a bit slow on the uptake for this one as far as Germany goes, but thought my UK and US friends might like to see a lovely example of branding done right.

I love it when every bit of a brand - the idea, the product, the name and the packaging - is outstanding in itself, but when it all fits together so beautifully, you get an extra dimension to the wow!

These drinks are both organic and Fair Trade and the names are knockout - LemonAid and ChariTea. Apparently this stroke of genius in nomenclature came to one of the young founders of the LemonAid company in a 3-in-the-morning Eureka! moment.

More about the drinks can be found on the company website here under the slogan "The Liquid Revolution."

Hope that the company continues to push its boundaries and, meanwhile, cheers to the two social entrepreneurs behind it!

Name dropping

Starbucks seems to be one of those Marmite brands that you either love to bits or hate with a vengeance. So anything the brand does attracts plenty of comment.

In March 2011, Starbucks will be rolling out its new logo in a re-brand. Most of the comment from Starbucks themselves (aka Howard Schulz) has surrounded the dropping of the word "coffee" from the logo. In a rather cryptic sentence (not helped by its strange grammatical construction), Mr Schulz reveals:

"Even though we have been and always will be a coffee company and retailer, it's possible that we'll have other products with our name on it but no coffee in it."

What is particularly baffling is that there is no "coffee" or name - Starbucks - on the new logo. Now, I expect the Starbucks lovers will say that this is the ultimate show of confidence from the global brand - that they are so well known, who needs a name? (The" artist-formerly-known-as" approach).

But the anti-Starbucks brigade will retort that this is nothing more than defensiveness or even shame surrounding the S-word.

Who's right? I suppose it all depends on whether your Starbucks coffee is half-empty or half-full.

The great Rock & Roll swindle 2010

A new perfume has been developed by the French fragrance company, Etat Libre d'Orange under the Sex Pistols name. Available in France and the US, the fragrance claims to "exude pure energy, pared down and pumped up by leather, shot through with heliotrope and brought back down to earth by a raunchy patchouli." The publicity material for the perfume also includes a list of must-dos for the potential wearer (resist tradition, fight conformity, express yourself with abandon...) and a reference to the "unruly turbulence of a prune."

As I see it, the only unruly turbulence that prunes are probably creating for the Sex Pistols these days is in their stomachs in combination with too much All Bran in an over-zealous middle-aged breakfast. But the perfume launch has brought plenty of comment ranging from the dreadful puns ("Pretty Fragrant") through to the disappointment that it smells of heliotrope and patchouli rather than cat piss/gasoline/stale sweat/ spilled beer/sick or cold cigarette smoke (sic.)

And there are those who are saying punk is dead.

But punk isn't dead. It's alive and laughing all its middle-aged way to the bank. And if Malcolm McLaren is turning in his grave, it's only because he's not getting his cut this time.

Spring cleaning

It's that yellow time of year. The daffodils may be on their way out but the fields and roadsides are aglow with rape and dandelions. And on patios all over Germany and, indeed, the world, the Kärcher is out, high-pressure cleaning as only it can.

Kärcher ("makes a difference") is one of those great brands that could only be German. With a core area of expertise in pressure cleaning outdoors, now extended to indoors, this is engineering ingenuity at its best. The company was founded back in 1935 and continues to go from strength to strength, even getting involved in huge public cleaning projects such as the Brandenburg Gate or Mount Rushmore - the ultimate "expert endorsement", I suppose.

Kärcher, in a way, is Germany's Hoover. Herr Alfred Kärcher's name has not just become a household one - in every sense of the word - along with his fellow Württembergers Bosch, Daimler and Count Zeppelin, but he's also had the honour of becoming a verb. Even if some, such as the current French president, have been known to use the verb a little unwisely.

Mad Bank

Banks and other financial institutions have had a rough time of it recently - some wrongly, some rightly. Most have a pressing need to maintain or rebuild their customers' trust but I'm not sure that all are going about it the right way.

I've already blogged about one company that is taking the approach of changing its name and branding to sound less like a solid, reliable kind of place that you'd be happy to let handle your money and more like an entry for the Eurovision Song Contest (yes, that's you, "Aviva"). And now, maybe because "bank" is such a dirty word, the Deutsche Bank is adopting an even more radical approach.

It has been announced that the Deutsche Bank is going to remove its name from its branding, leaving just the logo and the tagline "Passion to Perform" in a hand-written style.

Now, I have lived in Germany for fourteen years and I have to admit that seeing a dark blue box with "Passion to Perform" scrawled underneath it conjures up High School Musical or The Kids from Fame. But not Deutsche Bank - or any other sort of bank.

So, why? Well, firstly, to emulate "other exclusive and premium global brands". And secondly, apparently "...everyone looks for personality in business...it helps us decide who we trust..."

I don't know about you but if asked who I'd rather trust with my money, a "personality" or a bank, even in these days of mad, bad and dangerous-to-know banks, I'd probably go for that option.

With my rucksack in the Bauhaus

I'm working on a branding project at the moment and have noticed the reluctance of my German colleagues when it comes to names derived in some way from the German language.


Of course, there are some very good reasons for this, which I wrote about a few years back here. And you can see it clearly when you look at Top Global Brands - those that use names like Siemens, Porsche or Allianz hail from many years back while relative newcomers go for something more neutral such as SAP.


It's also apparent in the playground where there aren't too many Gudruns, Brunhilds, Helmuts and Gottfrieds running around these days - the more "all-purpose European" names such as Lena and Lukas are more prevalent.


In fact, the only ones who are really allowed to get away with good old-fashioned German names are bands or fashion brands, where a touch of irony is implied. Or non-Germans, like the New Zealand production house Krafthaus - check out the ironic militaristic imagery and gothic typeface here.


German is such a wonderful language that it does seem that some German brands are missing out on an opportunity here, if it's all handled in the right way. After all, "Vorsprung durch Technik" didn't do too bady for Audi.

That's not my name

These days, very little of my savings (not that they amount
to much), insurance, pension or any other financial affairs are sitting in the UK. For members of my family, it's a different matter. I was recently amused and a touch annoyed to see a customer missive from the insurance company formerly known as Norwich Union.

Now, Norwich Union are changing their name and luckily I missed the mega-budget TV ads put together to inform people of this fact. But I soon caught up with these and the company's ridiculous justification for their name change on the website for the "new" name, Aviva.

The TV ads and the blurb on the website commit just about every error in the argument that it's possible to make. In the TV ads, we're treated to a "host of A-List celebrities" who seemingly only reached that stellar status through carefully chosen stage names. But none of these people achieved success but then decided to change their name to something completely different just because they wanted to play on the global stage, did they? The blurb on the website tells us that "sometimes a simple change of name can unlock the potential that was there all along. Celebrities do it all the time..." Hmmm, I can't recall Madonna, the queen of re-invention, changing her name with each new persona or new man. And while we're on the subject, just remember you're an insurance and financial services company, not a celebrity. Some celebrities do all manner of distasteful things "all the time", but I don't really want my insurer following suit.

Then Norwich Union start really getting a bit too big for their boots, throwing in the statement that "for us, it was just a case of outgrowing the name we started out with". If you look at Interbrand's fastest growing brands, I think you'll find that most of them stick to their names. Can you imagine Apple thinking: "oh dear, an apple is, sort of...small. Can't we call ourselves one-million-acre-banana-plantation instead to give more an idea of scale?"

The name itself - Aviva - is described as "perfect for us because it's short, memorable and feels positive and lively." Apart from sounding like either a product for people of a certain age with bladder weakness or a Eurovision Song Contest entry, I am not sure that I want my pensions and insurance company too positive and lively. How about solid, honest and reliable?

But the customer letter is the worst item of the whole sorry lot. Here we are reassured by those lively, positive Aviva people (who I am now convinced are transvestites in sequins with bladder problems) that "our name change will make absolutely no difference to your relationship with us."

I think the customers should be the judge of that, thank you.

The generation game

I was very interested to read about a new (ish) phone called the Jitterbug, over on Brand Channel. This is a "no frills" phone that's easy to use with just the essentials. I was looking for a mobile phone for my mother a few months back and it's a shame that this hasn't hit Europe yet as it would have been just the ticket.

However, as ever in an article about a product for "seniors", the terms started to get confused in the article. We started off with "65 and over", then moved on to the familiar territory of "seniors" and the rather curious description "older adults". And then the author launched into something about "Baby Boomers" - which I think is my generation, so rather alarming as I don't think I'm a "senior" just yet.

Later, all was revealed as the author told us the origins of the name Jitterbug: "Jitterbug was a dance style made popular in the mid 1930s, so the name squarely targets consumers who remember that era." Well, that makes the target group at least 80, then.

Maybe the problem is that all this marketing putting-generations-in-boxes stuff didn't really take off until those famous Baby Boomers were running the show (and dismissing the next generations as X, Y and Z, rather unimaginatively.) They never really got round to finding a nice snappy label or two for the generations before. What do you call those born before 1945? War babies? Depression Kids?

I don't know, but it must be quite nice not to have been put in a box.

Bog Roll

I am fascinated by brand naming and, being British, particularly intrigued by the names given to all things relating to the toilet. So, in a totally frivolous post, and in the tradition of that great British TV show "Call my Bluff", let's have a look at some of the names that German discounters dream up for their Own Label bog roll.

1. Is "Floralys"

a. A nasty disease you get from toilet seats in dodgy clubs?

b. A new colonic-irrigation procedure?

c. Lidl's Own Label Bog Roll?

2. Is "Kokett"

a. A promiscuous and foul-mouthed girl from the North of England?

b. A processed potato side-dish?

c. Aldi's Own Label Bog Roll?

You get the idea. My second prize for the best German discounter Bog Roll name has to go to Plus, who not only call their Bog Roll "Touching" but follow that one up with calling their tissues "Feeling". Both of these names make me feel distinctly queasy in this context.

And the winner is....Penny, with the best Bog Roll name of all time:"Happy End". Now, what on earth can the thought process leading to that one be?