Times of London
February 10, 1998
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The Search for a Brand New Name
Perhaps one of the hardest tasks facing Jan Leschly and Sir Richard Sykes as
they ponder the proposed merger between SmithKline Beecham and Glaxo Wellcome
will be what to call this juggernaut of the pharmaceuticals industry.
SmithKline Beecham Glaxo Wellcome is clearly out of the question. Either a
couple of names will have to go or the identity consultants will have to devise
a completely new name.
Before anything is decided, however, there will be lengthy discussions on
the type of font used, to the colour of the logo. Having been through the
turmoil of mergers before, both companies take corporate identity very
seriously.
UK businesses spend about Pounds 150 million a year buying advice on how to
brand themselves. The design agencies that dreamt up names such as Cordiant,
Centrica and BA's new budget airline, Go!, are enjoying a boom, with financial
services, pharmaceutical and IT sectors spearheading the growth.
Richard Watson, a partner at Global Design Register, which helps companies
to find agencies, says the sector is growing for a number of reasons not least
the current spate of mergers and acquisitions. "At the moment you've got a lot
of chief executives, marketing, and communications directors asking themselves:
'With the arrival of the new millennium, isn't it time for a change in our identity?'"
The process by which a company arrives at a name stems from a number of
factors. A strong brand, or one with a distinct heritage, will almost always
survive a change. Some times names are dictated by historical circumstances.
For example, in 1996 when Sun Alliance, the insurer, took over Royal Insurance,
the marketers were unwilling to give up the well-known "Royal" label. So now we
have the Royal & SunAlliance.
O, that it were always so easy; for with a name comes baggage. All too often
corporate branding becomes an issue of pride as executives of merging companies
try to cling to the last vestiges of their company's identity.
Tony Allen, managing director of Interbrand Newell & Sorrell, the design and
identity consultant, worked on the identity borne out of the 1996 merger
between Pharmacia, the Swedish company, and Upjohn of USA. In the end it was a
simple and relatively painless marriage: Pharmacia & Upjohn. But even there
emotions ran high. As Allen recalls: "A name goes right to the heart of the
business. It affects everyone from the top to the bottom so you can't do it
without stirring emotions." Little wonder tempers fray. A company's corporate
identity marks the start of its marketing communications.
For the workforce, the City, the press and the public alike, your name is
the first experience of a company's brand attributes. It can, for example,
signal international ambition - British Telecom rebranded as BT. So when, after
seven months of research in 35 countries at a cost of Pounds 250,000, Guinness
and Grand Metropolitan revealed its new incarnation as Diageo last October,
many thought they had got it ludicrously wrong. It called to mind more an
Italian footballer than a worldwide empire spanning everything from burgers to
stout. Diageo might have succeeded in meeting the two vital criteria of a new
identity, namely, to attract and differentiate, but at what cost?
"Of course you expect a bit of flak," says the head of media relations,
Murray Loake. "But it's now a part of City life. We couldn't have called it
Guinness; neither could we have named it Burger King because it wouldn't be
correctly representing the whole story (of the company's operations)." To be
fair, Diageo had to draw a line. It was forced to compromise and adopt a new
identity, or risk offending either Guinness or GrandMet shareholders had it
chosen a composite name. The adverse publicity Diageo encountered was, in part,
caused by a perception within the business community that corporate identity is
an overrated and expensive discipline.
One European bank, currently going through a merger, asked four London
identity consultants to devise a name almost overnight for just Pounds 5,000
for a job normally expected to take 18 months and cost up to Pounds 500,000.
(Copyright 1998)
Times of London 02/10/98
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