If you’re called Ciara you’ve probably had to deal with a lot of bad jokes this week thanks to your namesake storm. The good news for Ciara’s across the country is that another storm is on the way, so attention should shift to the Dennis’ in your office instead. The Met Office and Met Éireann got a lot of coverage when they sought to crowdsource the names of storms in an effort to get people take them more seriously. From a publicity angle, it certainly seems to have been a success: the Met Office says it has helped to raise awareness and action taken in the face of severe weather.
Names matter a great deal, they’re the key identifier for people to instantly recognise your brand, so it’s important to get it right. While naming a storm raises awareness, it seems the actual name can affect response – a study that was widely reported in 2014 found that hurricanes in the US with feminine names cause significantly more deaths than masculine named hurricanes, which suggested that the public take hurricanes with feminine names less seriously.
Although this is perhaps an argument for behaviour change rather than a branding issue.
At Message House we’ve worked with big and small brands on naming, helping organisations understand which names will resonate, and which will fall flat.
A name that sounds really good in the board room can quickly fall to pieces when it makes contact with the real world. Take the Royal Mail: In 2001 it wanted to show that it did so much more than just deliver the post, and so a new name was unveiled – Consignia. Almost as soon was it announced, the criticisms started. In fact the named proved so unpopular that by 2002, they backtracked, and Consignia was never heard from again.
This is an extreme example, but it demonstrates an important point: listen to your audience. Royal Mail was a name and a brand that everyone knew and implicitly understood, trying to demonstrate that they offered more than just the post by ripping away a beloved brand was a very short-sighted move. Given the scale of the outcry from both employees and customers, it’s clear there wasn’t a lot of listening involved in that decision.
This isn’t to say organisations should never rebrand. There are plenty of good reasons to do so, whether its drawing a line to signal a new era, such as when Everything Everywhere became EE; to a brand refresh which opens up new opportunities – Opal Fruits becoming Starburst being the classic example.
Rebrands are always going to come with criticism – but when you’re in the midst of uncertainty, undertaking research can give you that insight on whether there are darker clouds still on the horizon, or if the storm is about to break.
