The Hindu Business Line : How to save money on rebranding?

WE live in an age when attitudes are not to be simply kept deep within but must be slipped on as a T-shirt or footwear. And company names need not be anything to do with the promoters but are to reflect ideals even if unreachable.

A frequent pastime among the big players is to engage in rebranding, with as much fanfare and market survey as they do for changing tiles in their bathrooms. Thus, when a sedate accounting firm thought of `Monday' as the right name for its consultancy wing, many wondered if at last the bean-counters were really getting soft. However, Monday blues did not last long since the outfit had a short life like Solomon Grundy and went into a computer company's fold.

A helpful Web site named www.whatbrandareyou.com is out there in the cyberspace and offers companies to save all the money: "Why sell the company jet to pick up a moniker that suits your brand?" it asks. The site offers "absolutely free of charge" the naming service. You don't pay, but "simply enter your name, choose your values and your goals." Then? "Your new name will be automatically displayed."

The site, run by "The Design Conspiracy" - an advertising company - is tired of the "growing trend for silly, irrelevant and often unpronounceable names (such as Aviva, Accenture, and Consignia) brought about by expensive re-branding exercises". So, it has gone about satirising the mania.

To save the users from too much deep thinking, the site provides a choice of values. Such as: dynamic, progressive, thrusting, innovative, exceptional, passionate, caring, motivation and anarchy.

They must have been in a tearing hurry to cook up something like that - which could remind you of matrimonial ads - and your English teacher would tell you that this is a mix of adjectives and nouns.

What can be the "main" goals, required as the final input? Global leadership, maximise result, recruiting the best, delivery, client focus, quality, partnership, client satisfaction, and conspiracy.

A recent report on the BBC News talks of the modus operandi of the Conspiracy team. They came up with about 150 names one afternoon, "just literally trying to think of the most stupid company names." For this, they "used an online Latin dictionary, and just added an `i' or and `a' to the end," even if the names were not pronounceable. To add to its popularity (or notoriety), the site was picked as `site of the day' by Financial Times, Yahoo, Media Guardian and The Daily Mirror.

However, the spoof has backfired on its creators, notes the report, because many of the prank names are real. And, to add to the tragedy, the two examples cited in BBC News are Indian names.

For instance, Amit Roy named his financial company Winnovate, wanting to have a "positive feel that implied innovation" and he does not know that Conspiracy suggests the name for free.

Likewise, Jasmine Malik registered her media company that moderates Internet chat sites, and her choice name Tempero, because "tempero is the Latin for moderation". And it is news to her that a site is offering it just like that to anybody.

To try out, I enter my name, choose progressive as value and conspiracy as goal. Name that pops out is "Newsagentia". The site observes: "Your brand will be unique because this denotes: Synergy with similarity." But don't be fooled as yet, because I press the back button and ask for the suggestion once again, without changing the inputs. It says: "Enhancion" meaning "Don't trust anyone."

That, I may trust.

SayCheek@hotmail.com

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