Phil: What’s in a name?

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Friday, August 6th 2010, 11:11AM 2 Comments

by Philip Macalister

ANZ announced the new name for its ING business yesterday and it certainly had got readers commenting. If you haven’t caught up with things the new name is OnePath. The range of views on the name is quite diverse and some aren’t that complimentary (also I should disclose a few haven’t see the light of day either). I’ve always wondered about how these big corporates come up with new names. My wondering continues. Companies can get great at telling a story around how a name is developed and what it stands for. One of the best was actually Royal & SunAlliance when it became Asteron. They had this massive multi-city Australasian event where every venue tuned into the main event in Sydney (I think). They had all these images which explained the “emotions” behind the brand. It was a well told story, but now do I remember any of the images or see them around? Nope. Bridgecorp did the same thing. You may recall it had all these cute little images which were meant to symbolise important values? Clearly it didn’t work. It certainly didn’t work on the staff. At one conference their BDM Andy Harris got up in front of the audience and ended up with these cutesy images on the screen and even he didn’t know what they stood for! “Oh it’s some stuff marketing come up with,” he said (or words similar to that – probably a little more expressive). One of the curious things with Onepath is that many of the names we see these days are made up words. Fonterra, Zespri, Cervena etc I always thought at the time how naff these names are, but history shows they have become accepted and you don’t hear too much criticism. Onepath seems different as it is made up of two, common, words and has some meaning already. Hopefully when the company takes you down one path to riches and protection it is the right path! Likewise I always thought financial services companies and advisers had lots of paths for their clients and they had to tailor the journey for the client? But then again I wonder what’s in a name? I recall years ago going on a junket to Christchurch when Infratil was being launched. We checked out these assets the company owned and one night had a discussion about what the name meant. I recall Lloyd Morrison saying the name didn’t matter. It’s what the company does which counts.

You can read Philip's blog here: http://www.goodreturns.co.nz/blog/

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