[Cache – #80]
Now on sale and number one
The fully-updated and revised second edition of Brand: It Ain’t the Logo* (*It’s what people think of you™), #1 on the Globe and Mail’s list of business bestsellers, is now available for sale in hard copy. Buy the book here.
This week’s excerpt
And now, the final of three excerpts from Chapter 15 – Great Names Mean Business:
The Initial Mistake
Choosing a name with initials is a good way to make your life miserable. A set of initials has no personality, no emotion, no visual imagery and is very difficult – a pain, really – to remember. Rest assured you will end up constantly repeating and explaining your name to everyone who is trying to understand 1. What the heck it is and 2. What the heck it means.
Initial names are successful when earned, not created. So why do otherwise smart businesspeople slap initials on a logo and think their work is done? Because very successful companies like GE, BMW and UPS surround them. People see this successful Branding and think they can emulate it. What they forget is that companies like these have earned the right to use the short form. Often it was their customers who started using the convenient shorter version long before the Brand itself formalized the use.
Of course, we all know that GE stands for General Electric and HP stands for Hewlett-Packard, because these Brands have been around forever and have spent infinite amounts of money to build awareness.
But please take a moment and tell me what these abbreviations mean:
- AMD
- AME
- CNS
- FPL
All of these are real organizations. But it’s unlikely you have any idea who these Brands are or what they do, because unlike GE or HP, they have not spent billions, over decades, spreading the word.
Have you?
**
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FREE OFFER: Get 2 friends to subscribe to Cache and receive the book’s new chapter, Great Names Mean Business, free on PDF. After your friends have subscribed, send me an email with their full names, and the chapter is yours. (andris@coinbranding.com)
