The Name Game: Deciding If and When to Reinvent Your Brand

Brand confusion is a common strategic reason for rebranding and should be considered if any of the following applies to your current business name:

• Back when you first began trading, you were the only company with a name like yours in your niche, but as time went on, you started getting calls for a competitor business with a strikingly similar name.
• People are constantly misspelling or mispronouncing your business name.
• You are finding people often mistake your company for another business that does something else entirely.

This last scenario was the case for one of our clients Amaru Window Coverings, whose original name was Energy Window Fashions. When returning booking calls, their staff were often mistaken for an energy services call centre, so they reached out to Zeemo for rebranding advice.

Brand confusion is especially problematic when it occurs with other companies within your industry. If multiple brands providing similar products or services all have similar business names, or acronyms or logo style and colour, potential customers can struggle to differentiate between them and therefore, brand recognition is diluted.

Your company name makes up a decent proportion of that all-important first impression people have of your brand. If your brand name is not distinct or too ambiguous or generic, you will need to spend significantly more on marketing to stand out from your competition. You will likely be passively losing customers through brand confusion.

A great brand name should be unique and stick in the minds of your audience; boring brand names are forgettable. If your business name is too bland, generic or unmemorable, it may be time to let it go.

One prime example of a dull name choice is to use an acronym. In just about any industry, you will find hundreds of businesses using variations of any three-letter combinations and often, these letters don't provide any legitimate contextual meaning.

For instance, if I type 'ARG Consulting' into Google, I get over 3.4 million hits with businesses ranging from IT and software, HR recruiters and financial service providers to shipping and mining companies. Unless you have the marketing budget of IBM, acronyms won't give you a competitive edge.

Another example is the Plain Jane Name, wherein a business uses generic words or phrases to simply describe their industry or work – e.g. Quality Builders, Quick Car Wash, Smart Software. These types of business names aren't very helpful to customers; they don't differentiate your brand and lack any evocative quality that might inspire your audience into choosing you over a myriad of other businesses.

It can be tempting to settle with a simple descriptive name; however, to build a next-level business, you need a breakthrough brand name that causes people to sit up and take notice.

Over time businesses evolve, industries, products, and strategies change, and sometimes an original business name falls out of step with those changes.

Companies will often change names to reflect their current operation better and communicate to their consumers and investors who they are as a brand and what they're doing.

Other reasons to rename can include when a name has a geographic reference in it that is no longer relevant, or the name is in some way limiting to the business expanding into new markets, or when the name references a partner who is no longer with the company.

The most common reason for a business to rebrand is when the original business has expanded. This could be due to a merger or acquisition or because the company has grown in size and scope or has plans to include new product lines or service options.

In some instances merging businesses will be absorbed under the name of the major or more recognisable brand; however, sometimes that company name is not appropriate for the new entity and an original or modified name is required.