Rebrand to Grow

Your brand name serves your brand strategy. If your name doesn’t reflect your services or where your business is heading, it’s a good reason to change it.

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By Jeremy Miller, Founder of Sticky Branding, and bestselling author at Sticky Branding and Brand New Name.

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Sometimes names get poisoned. Following the rise of the Islamist terrorist group, ISIS, several companies were stuck with a branding problem.

Isis Pharmaceuticals changed its name to Ionis Pharmaceuticals. The company was named after the Egyptian Goddess of life and magic. Isis protected women and children, and healed the sick. It was a beautiful origin story and name for a pharma company. But when Isis became known as ISIS, the name became a liability. It had to be changed.

Sometimes names don’t age well. Names like A-1 made sense for marketing in the Yellow Pages, but they are cliché today.

Founded in 1966, A-1 Shipping Supplies had outgrown its name. The name created brand dissonance with customers who frequently second guessed the company’s capabilities. The name was slowing down sales. When a business name is affecting sales performance, it’s got to go.

Using the brand naming methodology, Brand New Name, the company implemented a naming sprint to find a brand name they could own. The company chose the whimsical name, Rocketline. The new name helped to rejuvenate the brand, differentiate it from its competitors, and the company experienced an immediate sales lift.

Sometimes a new name signals change. Succession is a period of immense change, and an ideal time to rebrand.

Following a succession and change of ownership, Seattle-based restaurant group Consolidated Restaurants changed its name to E3 Co.

History was a defining criteria for E3’s naming strategy. CEO Jim Rowe said, “Our company has a storied past. We wanted to capture our legacy and heritage in a new company name — one that built upon the successes and standards of quality that we’ve operated by for decades.”

The other side of the story was the name — Consolidated Restaurants Inc or CRI — wasn’t working for them.

Entering its third generation of leadership, Jim wanted to set the company with a fresh new growth trajectory. The name change provided a platform to take the business to the next level.

Jim said, “We've gone through many naming processes, and it's always been a painful grind. Having the Brand New Name daily exercises with a daily quota helped us stay focused, energized, and inspired to brainstorm new ideas. The tools, exercises, and quotas helped us to think outside of the box.”

Rebranding is a powerful signal of change. It provides a new story that validates where your business is going and why.

Sometimes names become lost. As markets mature and become more competitive, brand names can lose relevance.

When I joined my family’s business, it was clear our company name wasn’t serving us.

In the eighties, my parents founded an IT staffing agency and named the company Miller & Associates. They chose the name because it sounded like a law firm — especially the acronym M&A. My dad felt recruiting agencies had a negative reputation, and he wanted the name to help the firm stand out by appearing more professional.

In the early 2000s, a name that was once an asset had become a liability. With the growth of the internet, customers couldn’t distinguish our firm from anyone else. We were getting lost. This insight triggered a complete rebranding of the business.

This was my first brand naming project and where I first developed the approach that would become Brand New Name. The sprint methodology works to unlock the creative genius of your employees to name or rename your brand.

We changed the company name from Miller & Associates to LEAPJob. We established a fresh new identity with a digital-first market strategy. And we repositioned the company to sales and marketing to capture a niche we could own.

The rebranding project was successful. We stopped looking like just another professional services firm, and we rocketed into growth mode — enabling us to sell the company in 2013.

Rebranding can be a powerful sales catalyst. After a major rebrand companies will experience a sales lift for six to twelve months.

Part of the lift is caused by announcing and promoting the change. You create renewed awareness. But if the change is strategic and aligned, that sales lift can be carried much longer and grow into a competitive advantage.

Don’t be afraid to change. Changing your name is never something you take lightly.

A brand name sticks around for a very long time. Your business will change, customers will change, products will change, but the name does not. A brand name is the longest living artifact of a company.

You know a product by its name. At the grocery store, you don’t usually deliberate on each and every product — you buy what you know.

If you’re shopping for laundry detergent, you pick up your brand. Maybe it’s Tide or maybe it’s Gain, but I guarantee you don’t think about it. The same happens with countless decisions every day. You’ve got brands that you know, like, and trust, and you choose them first without giving it a second thought.

The name, that simple label on the packaging, is integral to each and every one of your purchase decisions. You might understand all of a product’s features and benefits, and you may have lots of experience working with it, but you know the brand by its name. It’s how your mind identifies it, categorizes it, and recalls it.

Names are the cornerstone of every brand, and they are packed with so much meaning. It is like a label on a file folder in your mind.

It’s easy to overlook the importance of the label, because it’s just a word or a phrase. But that file folder contains all the history and experiences you have with the brand, both good and bad. It contains your product knowledge, and it holds your emotions and feelings toward the brand. The label is the brand name, and it carries an incredibly important function.

Getting your name right is important! But if your brand name isn’t working for you, change it. It’s really that simple.

Brands are designed to be relevant, and your name is the way we know your brand. You have the power to set a name that will define your brand and make it relevant.