What’s in a Name? Reinventing the Wheel to Create a Brand New Brand

Companies change their names all the time. It’s not always a matter of choice: the Virgin Megastores had to lose the Virgin name once Richard Branson ejected them from his empire, although I’m sure they could have done better than Zavvi, which sounded for all the world like a low-grade takeaway pizza place, the kind favoured by students after a hard night’s drinking. Although the company’s demise not too long after the change was completely unrelated to the new moniker, I can’t help but wonder how much good it did their sales.

Recent years have seen many companies adopt abbreviated versions of their original names, because they’re snappier, and because they’re the names by which most people referred to them in the first place. Hence, British Telecom became BT and Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC (that they had to drop ‘Chicken’ from the name because it breached trade descriptions is, as far as I can find, an urban legend).

Other changes have come about as the result of mergers, something that’s been occurring a lot in the banking sector in recent years. Again, that not all of these mergers have been entirely optional is rather by the by. And so The Midland Bank became part of the much larger Hong-Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, or HSBC (which makes the fact they refer to themselves as HSBC Bank here in England rather irksome). Halifax and Bank of Scotland merged to form HBOS. What will happen in the long term to this merged identity now they’re a part of the Lloyds Banking Group remains to be seen. Abbey – formerly Abbey National – was recently acquired by Grupo Santander, the Spanish banking corporation, and along with a number of other companies, will soon be known simply as Santander. Well that simplifies things, and it’s always good o know you’re dealing directly with a global giant, rather than a global giant disguised as something smaller and more friendly.

On the subject of global giants, one company that has poured a lot of money into a name change – or ‘rebrand’ – is Aviva, formerly Norwich Union in the UK, and Aviva (amongst other things) elsewhere. Of course, the first step in choosing a new name (after the initial ‘brainstorming’ session where a bunch of overpaid marketing execs chuck ideas round for a few hours before drawing up a shortlist of the least corny or ridiculous) is basic research. And I mean basic. Double-check the meanings of the names you’ve got in the dictionary. Google it. Chances are, if you’ve had an idea, someone else has already had it, especially if it’s any good. It’s no good, therefore, if you run a taxi firm, going with the intention of calling it A2B, and then being amazed that there’s already an A2B in the area. It’s the very least you should do before sinking a reputed £80M into an advertising campaign and all the other things like systems and stationery changes required for such a gargantuan identity overhaul. It’s a lesson hard-learned by the former polytechnic in Newcastle, which began work on a rebrand to the City University of Newcastle upon Tyne before someone spotted the potentially problematic acronym.

According to their press, Aviva was chosen for its apparent lack of obvious connotations, and for sounding bright and zesty. They also note that it is a Hebrew name which means Spring or Renewal. So, sort of appropriate to the idea of a rebrand being a rebirth, one could say, but hardly without association. Not being a particularly Jewish company, it doesn’t seem entirely appropriate. A recent survey suggested that the majority of people in the UK think it’s a type of car. It’s hard to deny that it is quite similar to the Vauxhall Viva. And while it may also sound rather similar to Arriva (’one of the largest transport services organisations in Europe, employing some 34000 people and delivering more than one billion passenger journeys across 12 European countries ever year’), at least it’s original, right?

Well, at the time Norwich Union settled on their future name, there was Aviva Cosmetic Dentistry in Hertfordshire, Aviva: women’s world-wide web, a ‘free, international, feminist webzine,’ Aviva Natural Cleaning Products, the Aviva School of Midwifery, and the Aviva High School ‘for girls in need of special education,’ to name but a few, all operating and appearing on major search engines. And what of the manufacturers of the Accu-Chek Aviva Glucose Meter? Obviously, it’s impossible to predict, but perhaps the lesson to be learned from this – apart from that the adage ‘look before you leap’ is one that has considerable merit and that planning really is everything – is that size isn’t everything, and money can’t buy you everything, least of all uniqueness.