From A to Zeneca, a brief history of corporate naming

I’ve always felt a mild professional antipathy toward Zeneca. For me, it was the coinage that tipped corporate names into the abyss of synthetic anonymity.

It’s got to such a point now that it’s hard to distinguish a pharma company from the drug it makes. Try sorting these out: Actavis, Actos, Advaxis, Alimta, Anavex, Atripla – companies, drugs or the moons of Jupiter?*

Then I found this nugget buried in a Daily Telegraph article raking over of the ashes Accenture, Consignia and other weary corporate naming controversies.

Nothing stupid, funny, or rude and devoid of meaning

The company that started the fashion for new, made up names was Zeneca, now AstraZeneca, the biosciences company split off from ICI in 1993. Leading consultants still view it as the best example of a name change.

Sir David Barnes was its first chief executive and is now a non-executive director. His inspiration was Kodak, a name that was memorable phonetically but had no associations with other companies.

Barnes said: “There is an advantage in being alphabetically at the top or bottom of lists, A or Z. I asked Interbrand to find a name that was phonetically memorable, of no more than three syllables and didn’t mean anything stupid, funny or rude in other languages. A new name also allowed us to instill a new company culture.”

Barnes paid about £50,000 for the name and did not spend anything on advertising: “We just sent out lots and lots of press releases every time the company did anything. Thanks to the press it soon caught on.”

In truth, Zeneca was a latecomer to the ‘made-up corporate name’ party.

As the reporter would have discovered, had he done his homework, the trend started much earlier. In 1961 The Haloid Photographic Company changed its named to Xerox and gave the world a corporate name that looks totally unpronounceable. Then there’s the Allegis storm that engulfed United Airlines in 1985.

But what is notable about Zeneca is the blithely deliberate meaninglessness of the name.

There is something endearingly Colonel Blimp-ish about Sir David’s no nonsense approach here. Not for him the tenuous, tortuous semantic acrobatics of Syngenta (“derived from Greek and Latin origins: together with people”) or Novartis (“from the Latin words novae artes meaning new skills”). No mucking about, just make one up – nothing stupid or rude in other languages and just three syllables.

Of course, this was in the pre-Internet and SEO days when there was some an advantage to be alphabetically positioned in directories and the media had not yet turned corporate naming in to a blood sport.

Contrast the Daily Telegraph’s coverage above with the recent outraged headlines over Hibu, the new name for the Yell Group: “Chief Executive admits new name is meaningless”.

How times have changed.

“The name game”. The Daily Telegraph. 14 January 2001

*Actavis – a pharmaceutical company; Actos – a diabetes drug; , Advaxis – a biotechnology company;  Alimta – a lung cancer drug; Anavex - a life sciences company;  Atripla – an HIV treatment drug.

Lincoln: president, martyr and confused brand

When Abraham Lincoln breathed his last at 7:22 AM on April 15, 1865, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton solemnly intoned: “Now he belongs to the ages.”

While his words were prescient, he didn’t go far enough. He could have said: Lincoln belongs to the ages, and eventually to Corporate America.

Lincoln is an industry. By one estimate more 16,000 books have been written about the 16^th president. And when Daniel Day-Lewis duly lifted the Oscar for best actor the Academy Awards for his performance in the movie ‘Lincoln’, it was a fitting tribute to the actor and the man he portrayed.

Why this enduring fascination with Lincoln?

Lincoln’s life exemplified what has been variously labeled “the American dream,” “the right to rise” from “rags to riches”—or in Lincoln’s case quite literally to rise from a log cabin to the White House.

His story, the Lincoln brand, embodies gritty determination, honesty, family values, unswerving belief in America and the basic rights of his fellow men.

It’s a powerful symbol of what ordinary Americans want to believe about social mobility and the opportunity to get ahead.

Shortly after Daniel Day-Lewis’s Oscar triumph, the Lincoln Financial Group of Philadelphia pounced on the opportunity to share in the reflected glory of his achievement. The company ran an ad in the Wall Street Journal.

“President Lincoln”, the copy reads, “your honesty, integrity and belief that all people should be in charge of their own destinies inspired the world. And, of course, one particular financial company.” No prizes for guessing which one.

So how is it, one is bound to ask, that a company can trade so fast and loose with the Lincoln name and drape itself in the borrowed imagery and character of a revered president?

It seems that Lincoln Financial Group has every right to do so. According to the company’s website, Robert Todd Lincoln, the President’s only surviving son, gave the company’s founders permission to use his father’s name and likeness in July 1905, thereby legitimizing the qualities of integrity and honesty on which they intended to build their business.

And fair enough, you might think, for a company that espouses unflashy conservative virtues of financial prudence and personal responsibility. But given the license it seems to have with the Lincoln brand, the timid splat of a silhouette in the company’s logo is a terrible waste of an opportunity.

Leave it to the professionals of Madison Avenue to squeeze every last drop out the Lincoln legacy, even when it’s scarcely warranted or effective.

In an attempt to revive the fortunes of its Lincoln brand, the Ford Motor Company is aiming to “return Lincoln to its original branding” and to “restore Lincoln to its luxury status.” Putting that in plainer English: Ford isn’t selling enough Lincoln cars because the brand has been neglected.

The Lincoln connection in this case is tenuous: The Lincoln Motor Company was formed in August, 1917 by Henry Leland, a former manager of the Cadillac division of General Motors, and his son, Wilfred. Leland named the new company after his hero for whom he cast a vote in 1864. Ford acquired Lincoln in 1922.

When Ford started selling off its Premier Auto Group brands—Volvo, Jaguar, Land Rover, and Aston Martin—a few years ago, the primary aim was to raise cash before the financial storm that took down GM and Chrysler.

The plan was for Lincoln to be the division of Ford that sells luxury cars. But here, in 2013, with a depleted line-up and no signature model, a brand with little discernible character, and fierce competition for luxury car buyer’s attention from Lexus, Mercedes and BMW, what does a car company to do? It splurges on advertising.

Click to play

In a nicely produced TV spot, “Introducing The Lincoln Motor Company,” the legend briefly appears, striding through the mists of time in a stovepipe hat, a frock coat swirling about him, before we are plunged into a showcase of futuristic technical wizardry.

Why would a 21^st Century automaker want to invoke the spirit of a 19^th Century president whose main mode of transport was a horse a carriage? And does today’s 40-year-old buyer really care if Lincoln made cool luxury cars before he was born—and then stopped making anything impressive at all?

Then there’s the name change to Lincoln Motor Company. It’s an attempt to isolate the brand and distance it from Ford, but it’s is just a name change. Ford still wholly owns it. So, what’s it all about?

Certainly not brand building. This is an exercise in slick advertising to mask the absence of a brand. Ford needs to seriously rethink the Lincoln brand and recast it toward a clearly-defined market segment it can own.

And the Lincoln Financial Group really does need a new logo.

Leidos, a name with a kaleidoscope of problems

SAIC is one of those awkward corporate initialisms you just want to avoid. Do you try to say it (say-ick), or spell it out letter-by-letter?

It stands for Science Applications International Corp, a name that tells you little more than the initials.

No matter. SAIC is an American contracting company that you’ll probably never have a need to call.

In what is a difficult market for government services, SAIC has decided to split itself into two to ‘enhance’ shareholder value. The smaller of the two companies will keep the name SAIC and stay focused on its core business.

The other entity will be spun off as a new company focusing on technology for the national security, health and engineering sectors. So here is a chance for SAIC, or a part of it, to come out from behind its anonymity and say something to the market about what it stands for and why it exists.

Enter ‘Leidos’.

In a press release SAIC explains that the origin of the name Leidos is to be found hidden in the word kaleidoscope and “reflects the company’s effort to unite solutions from different angles.”

If, like me, you are having trouble trying to figure out how solutions can be united from different angles, try this wonderful piece of PR hyperbole:

“It’s a memorable word with dynamic connotations that capture the energy, talent and passion that our employees bring as they work to deliver solutions that protect our nation, our communities, and our families.”

Leidos (Lydos, Laydos? Leedos?) is a coinage that has the primary virtue of being (presumably) available. As a name it connotes nothing at all. Nothing. And why should it? It’s just a made-up name based on a piece of a word that, in and of itself, has no inherent meaning.

Eventually, with a lot of investment around a focused brand strategy, Leidos might begin to contain ‘dynamic connotations that capture the energy, talent and passion of our employees”.

Until then, the company should begin to figure out who it is and why people on whom it depends should care about its existence, and not depend on an unremarkable six-letter word to do all the explaining.

The Washington Post weighs in: http://tinyurl.com/b4mqq3b

BlackBerry, withering on the vine

Most people know what a BlackBerry is. But what, or who, is BlackBerry?

Research in Motion (RIM) has finally bitten the bullet and changed its corporate name to Blackberry after the device that came to define the company and generate the bulk of its profits.

The dismantling of the confusing and unwieldy Research in Motion/RIM/BlackBerry naming scaffold has met with widespread approval. It was, on the face of it, an easy call in branding terms.

But the naming superficialities masked a deeper problem. Research in Motion, a name chosen by co-founder Mike Lazaridis who was reportedly inspired by the phrase “poetry in motion” in a news story about football players, was a company run by engineers who had little understanding of branding and, likely, much less interest. It was all about technology, product and manufacturing. BlackBerry, albeit nicely named by Lexicon, was simply a device that sold on its unique functionality.

As Andy Grove of Intel reminded us more than a decade ago, in the Darwinian world of technology only the paranoid survive. Today’s product innovation is tomorrow’s standard. BlackBerry’s technology soon became commoditized and its functionality was bettered by competition at both ends of the value spectrum. There was nowhere to go but down for the company that, at one time, held 44.5 percent of the domestic market. It watched helplessly as its share slipped to 8.4 percent. It’s a story that Nokia also knows well.

The story of RIM became that of a one-trick-pony, a flailing technology company that had run out of ideas and was trailing in the smartphone wars. BlackBerry was suddenly a gooseberry.

New CEO Thorsten Heins has the right instincts. He was probably tired of hearing Research in Motion/RIM/BlackBerry had a branding problem when he took over in 2011. High on his list of priorities was the hiring of a Chief Marketing Officer and Frank Boulben was duly appointed in May 2012.

The company has clearly made a huge commitment to its CMO and the role of marketing in its future. Hacking away the thicket of names and changing the company name to BlackBerry was a prerequisite of recovery.

“We wanted to have one brand, one premise, to focus all of our marketing efforts,” said the CMO. Good.

The new BlackBerry 10 operating system and Z10 and Q10 handsets were positively received at the launch. Great!

But then what happened? An expensive, forgettable Super Bowl ad and the bizarre appointment of singer Alicia Keys as Global Creative Director.

This is brand building à la dot.com boom and bust. Remember that era of sock puppets and venture capital-fueled Internet startups with no discernible business model?

Branding then was nothing more than awareness building in the urgent rush for eyeballs. BlackBerry seems to be in a similar rush. The company has bet the farm on its ultimate asset, the BlackBerry name, but what should be an object lesson in corporate brand building has given way to gimmicky and expensive marketing hype.

Admittedly, there is a voguish coolness in the use of celebrity consultants. will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas has become a “futurist for hire” for the likes of Intel, Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch InBev. Even so, Alicia Keys? BlackBerry? Global Creative Director?

This desperate dissembling tells the world very little about BlackBerry and how it should understand the Blackberry brand. Or maybe it speaks volumes.

PS: Thanks JL for point out that BlackBerry has two capital Bs. Why? I don’t know. Post amended accordingly.

Enter “NewsBeast”, rampaging quietly behind the scenes

The operator of the erstwhile news magazine Newsweek, which became a digital-only publication last year after 80 years in print, officially became “NewsBeast” on Friday.

The corporate rebranding appears to leave unchanged the separate online brands of Newsweek and The Daily Beast, which merged in 2010.

News_Beast, as it was rendered at the announcement, is the just the name of the company that operates Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Mental images of a Godzilla-like creature named “NewsBeast” rampaging up-and-down the Hudson in search of scoops are, therefore, entirely unwarranted.

As odd as the name is, it’s probably a little-known fact among readers of The Daily Beast that name of the site was purloined by Tina Brown from Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 novel Scoop, which is based on Waugh’s own experience working for the Daily Mail.

It features one William Boot, a mild-mannered contributor of nature notes to Lord Copper’s Daily Beast, a fictional British national newspaper. Young Boot is pressed into becoming a foreign correspondent when the editors mistake him for a novelist with the same name and is dispatched to cover a civil war in the equally-fictional African state of Ishmaelia.

There, despite his total ineptitude, he accidentally manages to get the “scoop” of the title. Well worth a read.

Personally, I think Ishmaelia would make a much more fitting name for the company than NewsBeast. Tina Brown missed that one.

A much better read

Further reading: NewBeast and other merger name options.

Blaer needs a shot of Tequila

Blaer, which means “light breeze” in Icelandic, sounds a perfectly nice name for a young girl.

The Iceland government takes a different view. Blaer is not on it’s approved list of names for girls on the Personal Names Register. So, as most of the world knows by now, the 15-year-old girl is suing the state for the right to legally use the name given to her by her mother.

We’ve been down this naming path before. It may seem high-handed state interference into private and very personal matters such as an individual’s name, but the baby naming laws are there for what the Icelandic authorities see as good reason: to protect children from naming abuse.

Sweden, Germany, New Zealand, Japan, Denmark and China also have laws designed to shield the innocent from the wilder naming fantasies of their parents.

For example, the Danish authorities have stepped in to block parents trying to name their children, variously, Anus, Pluto and Monkey.

The Swedes have rejected “Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb111163 (pronounced Albin, naturally).

It was submitted by a child’s parents in protest of the naming law, and was duly dismissed. The parents later submitted “A” (also pronounced Albin) as the child’s name. It, too, was rejected.

Metallica, Superman, Veranda and Elvis have also been rejected. Ikea has been nixed but Lego is OK, for some reason, as is Google for a middle name.

Blaer, or whatever, should at least be grateful for her mother’s good taste, and also draw encouragement from the example Tequila, an 8th grade Swedish girl who triumphed over the system.

The Swedish authorities refused to recognize her name. Her family took the case all the way to the Supreme Administrative Court, which also rejected it.

She took the name Quila instead but was always Tequila to her friends and family.

As she was never baptized as a child, Quila decided to take another shot at getting the Tax Agency, the authority that administers the naming law, to approve her name. She sent her own personal plea explaining how she has grown into the name and that she wanted it to be official before her baptism.

They relented. She is now officially Tequila. The breeze is at your back Blaer. Don’t give up.

Further reading:

Is your name your destiny?

Why Advizent, Aspiriant and Fortigent are so Deficient as names

In spite of its deliberate “me too” play on Lucent, or maybe because of it, the arrival of Agilent Technologies opened up a rich new naming seam for imitators to mine.

And they have been busy. Here’s a few examples of the genre provided by Igor, the naming and branding company:

Acquient, Aquent, Aspirient, Aviant, Axent, Axient, Bizient, Candescent, Cendant, Cerent, Chordiant, Clarent, Comergent, Conexant, Consilient, Cotelligent, Equant, Ixtant, Livent, Luminant, Mergent, Mirant, Navigant, Naviant, Noviant, Novient, Omnient, Ravisent, Sapient, Scient, Sequant, Spirent, Taligent, Teligent, Thrivent, Versant, Versent, Viant, Vitalent and Vivient.

Now, courtesy of the investment advisory industry, three new names join the list: Advizent, Aspiriant and Fortigent.

In an admirably measured response given the dreadfulness of the names, David Placek of Lexicon Branding is quoted in trade magazine RIABiz as saying the trend towards such coined names is all wrong.

“Those [names] that are so coined are less efficient,” he says, particularly given that financial firms want the name to engender trust.”

Igor is much less reticent about the trend it blames for establishing “a major school of bad naming: the ‘unique empty vessel’.

“These names are not part of an elegant solution”, it blogs. “They are the seeds of a branding nightmare.”

“This type of name is arrived at because of the lust for a domain name, consensus building and as a shortcut to trademark approval. At some point in the process marketing left the room, and nobody seemed to notice. And while they may technically be unique, it’s at the level of a snowflake in a snow bank.”

Quite so.