From Comcast to XFinity–What Was the Strategy?

Many critics have undoubtedly spoken before me, but I need to add my name to the chorus. Renaming a corporation is probably the hardest thing to do in the world of branding, but that is not an excuse for a poorly constructed name, like XFinity.

In fact, Time magazine has recognized it as one of the top 10 worst corporate name changes.

Let’s begin with the facts.

1. The Comcast brand has been a lightning rod for ill will as well as the butt of jokes (thanks to the infamous YouTube video of the sleeping Comcast installer)
2. The recent acquisition of NBC from GE is the kind of event that merits a full examination of the corporate brand, in order to determine the potential “stretch” of the acquiring company into a new category
3. Research may have shown that the current name is too strongly linked with cable and internet, and that newer offerings, such as pay-per-view, are unduly overshadowed. For example, did you know that Comcast owns Fandango and Daily Candy…or the Philadelphia 76ers?

In my opinion, there is pretty strong justification for considering a name change. But how they got to Xfinity, I do not know. Then again, maybe I do. If the Marketing executives at Comcast spoke to the major corporate identity firms, they probably learned that naming is a time consuming, expensive business and a legal nightmare to boot. Or maybe they retained a firm that was unable to come up with a name that everyone liked, or could be legally cleared without significant expense. (I always warn my clients that naming will break your heart. The best name is virtually always taken.)

The clock was ticking, and Comcast wanted to make a statement and an event about the addition of the NBC properties to its portfolio. As it so happened, the name XFinity was already owned by Comcast–due to the beta launch of something called “Fancast Xfinity”.

Three aspects of this name are seriously troublesome. First, it is awkward to say. Anything that begins with an X is daunting.

Second, X is often a shorthand for pornography, or sexually explicit material.

Third, to anyone who spends time on linguistic matters, the symbolism of the letter x is quite negative. To wit:

To remove or invalidate by or as if by running a line through or wiping clean. annul, blot (out),cancel, cross (off or out), delete, efface, erase, expunge, obliterate, rub (out), scratch (out), strike (out), undo, wipe (out). Law vacate. See continue/stop/pause.  Source: Thesaurus

So if “Finity” is supposed to represent the concept of “infinity”, then the X cancels it out. If “finity” is supposed to mean “finite”, then the x cancels out the finite and I guess it becomes “infinity”. It’s essentially a double negative.

A new name has to work hard enough as it is without having to counteract hard-wired negative dimensions. If you throw enough money at it, I guess it will become less obnoxious with time, but it’s going to be one of those names that will always rub me the wrong way–like SYFY.

Microsoft Comes Up With A Great Name–Bing

I was very pleasantly surprised to read in today’s New York Times about–not the new search engine from Microsoft–but its choice of a name.  Bing. Naming is one of the very hardest things to do in branding, which I have obviously mentioned before, and I think this one is a winner.

Early commentary on AdAge is negative, but it’s more about Microsoft the evil empire, than it is about anything else. I’m just taking a moment to revel in a real word that is clearly the result of an actual creative brief! Bravo to Microsoft’s marketing team as well as their agency, Interbrand. What is not known is whether or not this is the same team that came up with the original name, the unfortunate “Kumo“. (If so, well, congratulations on a good recovery.)

Clearly, I have not seen the brief, but can infer some of the criteria:

Short, Memorable, “Verb-able”, Evokes a sound, Easily pronounced, Upbeat (?)

For all I know, it took 18 months of torture to come up with the solution. But it doesn’t look that way. It’s a completely non-tortured, non-coined word. It’s a fun word, which is a departure for the massively literal Microsoft.

And yes, of course, the actual product must now deliver on a rather delicious promise that suggests “aha”, “eureka”, etc. But right now, it’s delightful to recognize some very very nice work. 

 

Bank as Ally? A Novel Concept

GMAC announced that it has changed its name to Ally Bank. As someone who has been involved in corporate naming, I have no interest in quibbling over whether or not it is a good or bad name. Naming is notoriously difficult. If the naming team did it right, there would have been specific criteria around the name type, a clear target audience, and, presumably, testing.

Ally is a decent, in fact, a strong word. The meaning is nice. It’s a little uncomfortable at first, because it’s similar to a woman’s name (pronounced all-ey) and of course the weight loss medicine alli. But it seems to have been “clean” in trademark screening and they were able to obtain the domain: http://www.ally.com.  A simple domain like that is rare indeed. And there is a bank in the Phillipines, Allied Bank, which uses the tag-line, “Your ally. Your bank.” Legal wrangling must have occurred over that one.

The corporate color is a refreshing shade of purple, and the identity is simple, modern, but somewhat sterile and impersonal. The swooshy things don’t do much for me. But they seem to be trying to avoid the usual happy, smiley, diversity-centric Getty images that we see in bank branches, websites and ATM’s.

 

This new bank is doing and saying all the right things: big print, limited product array, differentiation from “traditional” banks, simple interface, etc. And I applaud the company for this.

Ally Bank is different from other banks right now, though, and it’s an important difference: as far as I can tell, Ally is currently in the business of only taking deposits. They are way overextended on the credit side from their heritage product–car loans. I have worked in banking, and believe me, it is much easier to be open, friendly and transparent about deposits than it is about lending money, which requires deep scrutiny of an individual’s creditworthiness. And significant documentation (even if the print is large).  And an ability to say no. And an ability to repossess. Icky stuff. In other words, when it comes to lending, a bank cannot always be an ally. 

I’m not trying to be jaded or negative or skeptical. I just have a memory of another fresh face that was going to reinvent banking by being friendly, open, convenient, and available to all. That bank was called WaMu. We know how that story ended. Let’s hope for a better outcome here.

Renaming the Swine Flu

Thanks to an email from my friend Scott Brennan, this morning, suggesting that I address this massive branding issue, I learned that indeed, the US Government will heretofore name the current virus outbreak H1N1 instead of the “Swine Flu”.  

The pork lobby is behind the name change, and although it’s easy to laugh about it, they have some justifiable issues. Like certain countries’ refusal to import pork products from the U.S. due to the mistaken perception that eating pork could somehow transmit the virus. Grain and soybean futures plummeted as well, so there is probably some investor anxiety too. As others have pointed out, the CDC hasn’t quite gotten it because their website is still named “swineflu”. 

Pork supporters need to be careful, though, because the truth is that the influenza virus tends to be generated by either birds (avian flu) or pigs (swine flu). In fact, many reports do make a connection between a large Smithfield operated pig farm in Mexico and the first reported cases. The more they protest that there is no link to pork in the current outbreak, the more eager researchers will be to identify the source. And if it is a pig farm, then it just might be possible that there will be more attention on livestock conditions, not less. (Giant agribusiness was not a factor, however, in what is still history’s worst flu epidemic back in 1917. If you want to know more, I highly recommend the book The Great Influenza, by John Barry.)

All of this has reminded me of the power in a name–both good and bad. How many jokes have you heard about the long-gone Nova, the car that means “will not run” in Spanish.

Perhaps what the World Health Organization needs is a good naming brief! Apparently, the naming device in this case was the assumed source.

As names go, Swine Flu meets many of the criteria of a good name. It’s short, simple, easy to remember, descriptive. I wish I could come up with names like that! H1N1 just doesn’t do it for me. As another official suggested, perhaps in the future, we should use the geographic location as an aspect of the name. Well, we know that Mexico won’t accept Mexican Flu, and I have got to assume that the U.S. and Canada want nothing to do with North American Flu. And didn’t we stop using Asian Flu years ago?

How depressing that we have moved, like so many technology companies, to the alpha-numeric as the core of our naming system. Maybe they can jazz it up with a nice logo!