Ten years ago this month, we changed the name of the company – it was originally All-media Design. It did “exactly what it said on the tin” to borrow a slogan already 6 years old by then. So ten years on, has it made a difference?

Compare two companies that started out around the same time as each other, Microsoft and Apple. One is essentially a descriptive name, the other a pure brand name. In the final analysis, once you’re that big, your brand is firmly embedded in the minds of your customers and the brand name no longer confers significance beyond your own brand values. But they only got that big by leading the way with products people wanted.

For the rest of us, trying to differentiate ourselves in a crowded market, the conventions of the brand name are important. It has to be memorable, distinctive, and so on. Ten years later, I’m glad Designation made the switch, early on, to a distinctive name. But what do you think?

Both Kraft and Hershey were interested in acquiring Cadbury’s. What do they both suggest to me? Cheese, Gromit, Cheese! Kraft ‘cos they make cheese, and Kershey because their apology for chocolate tastes of the stuff – if you think that’s unlikely try some and then tell me it doesn’t. So it seems Cadbury’s wasn’t going to escape the cheese monster one way or another.

Now there’s a big fuss, but is it justified? “What’s the worst that can happen?” Well, I think there are essentially two gaffs Kraft could make. Firstly, they could muck around with the recipe of our beloved Dairy Milk. Hands off! We don’t want it tasting of cheese, but we don’t want it “improved” into Belgian or Swiss chocolate either. Those guys think our British chocolate isn’t chocolate at all. If we wanted Belgian or Swiss chocolate, and sometimes we do, we’d buy some. Our Cadbury’s product is unique and we want it to stay that way.

Secondly, they could mess with the brand. Whatever the chocolate tastes like, you just ain’t going to enjoy is as much if it’s called Kraft. It will taste of cheese even if there’s none in it. Brands are about promises. Kraft promises easy to use cheese products, fine. Cadbury’s promises, well, not actually chocolate of course, but indulgence. You can’t get them confused.

It doesn’t really matter who owns the shares in the company, as long as the product tastes the same and the reassuring name is on the wrapper. Only time will tell if the new owners understand this.

Leave a comment to tell us what you think.

Alright, so that was the noughties. What will happen in the, er, whatever the next ten years are called. Never mind, the last ten years whizzed by so it will the twenties before we know it and we can start labelling the decades again.

But will we think of this time differently because it has no label? Naming isn’t just about differentiating one product from another; it affects how we feel about the product. If Chanel No.5 was just known by a chemical formula, it really wouldn’t seem to smell so sweet, to borrow from last month’s edition.

Surely we can think of something? Go on, give me your suggestions (via commenting), even if they’re a bit risqué, or do I mean naughty?

Happy New Year!

Co-branding is a tricky business by definition. Brands are designed to help differentiation, so putting them together is not guaranteed to be a success. If you are going to attempt it, you need to take care. It seems Microsoft did not think through their launch gimmick for Windows 7 carefully enough.

The plan was to commission a special episode of “Family Guy” the edgy US animated series, celebrated for its irreverence. But at the last moment the plan was abandoned after executives viewed the programme and realised what they had done.

There can’t be many brands more ubiquitous in the world today than Microsoft, which needs to appeal to a wide range of people. On the other hand, Family Guy is almost designed to annoy the majority with its blend of taboo subjects and toilet humour, especially, surely, in the USA.

So how was this ever perceived to be a marriage made in heaven? Surely Family Guy was never going to be family viewing.

When is it time to ditch a brand name? In the case of the Labour Party the answer is to start planning to change it now, in readiness for the period after the general election.  There are pros and cons, but the balance has tipped in favour of the benefits of a new name. A rebrand has already happened, of course, with the move to New Labour. The Tories have taken advantage of it in the past, with “Labour’s not working”.

But more significantly, the word “labour” has finally lost its relevance. It was never a pleasant sounding word, but it did make sense at the beginning of the 20th Century. It no longer has even that going for it, and it’s time for a fresh start and a fresh name for the new millennium.

A fresh brand name helps any organisation to draw a line under the past and move on. This is as true for companies suffering in the recession as it is for the Labour Party – have you considered it for your business?

What do you think?

Know them? They went up the hill. Then they grew up, got a job with Unilever and were forced to change their names.

Alright it was nearly ten years ago that Jif became Cif so why don’t I just get over it? I have a bottle of the stuff under the sink because it works but after all this time I still resent the name.

But surely it doesn’t matter that a brand name has meaning? It’s just about the benefits that attach to it in the mind of the consumer, isn’t it? Well I don’t think so. Jif was named Jif because it suggested it cleans things quickly – which it does. A jiffy is a very short interval of time. It even has meaning in electronics, computing and physics – although confusingly not the same meaning. I will never warm to Cif. I might as well change to the equally ridiculously named Cillit. Jif used to Vim, but that’s one change I applaud. For me Vim was something my late mother used, a dry powder that came out of a cardboard tube with a perforated metal lid. I was only forced to do one year of Latin but it was enough to learn that Vim means strength – a reasonable idea for cleaner.

Or maybe the whole thing is a brilliant plan to bring back Jif and wipe out Cillit, which can hardly become Jillit in response, can it? Unilever would clean up.

What do you think? Give us your opinion here.

Which came first? While you’re pondering that one, here’s another conundrum – which comes first, the brand or the product?

This dilemma was neatly demonstrated in the recent final of The Apprentice. Our local girl Yasmina had to outsmart challenger Kate by creating a new brand of chocolates. And she succeeded in winning with a box of inedible chocs she branded “Electric”, beating Kate’s “Choc Amour” box of delicious confectionery. Why? Because Kate started with the product, and was then forced to charge a fortune for her box to cover her costs of the expensive ingredients, thus pricing it out of the mass market. Yasmina started with the market and worked backwards, fixing her low price first, and selecting the ingredients to suit. Which error would be easier to fix in reality? The recipe of the chocolates, of course.

You could argue they both succeeded in creating new brands on paper. It’s just that one would be doomed to failure from the start. Do you agree? Oh, and apparently the egg came first.

Please leave a comment to give us your opinion.

Woolworths is dead, long live Woolworths. Here’s a great example of how bricks and mortar, or should that be bricks n’ mortar, is not part n’ parcel (okay, I’ll stop that now) of a brand. The new owners of the brand, Shop Direct, asked people what it was they loved about Woolies. The answers included Ladybird children’s clothes and Pick n’ Mix sweets. And so the brand was sharpened and brought to the online marketplace with lower overheads.

Of course, this could have happened years ago in parallel with the high street operation. If the previous owners had done this they would have had options, as other retailers have who did. Of course there’s no guarantee they would have got it right. So perhaps the best thing for the brand was to change hands and benefit from an injection of new ideas and expertise.

What do you think about Woolies brand? Leave a comment.