Wht’s n a nme?

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” is one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines. What about corporate brand names? Do they also smell as sweet?

At issue is the decision by the UK’s Standard Life Aberdeen to rebrand itself as Abrdn. (Shortly after the 2017 merger between Standard Life and Aberdeen, the new company proceeded to sell off the Standard Life business to the Phoenix Group.) The reaction following its April 26th announcement of its new Abrdn name was swift and negative. The BBC website article was titled “Abrdn: Standard Life Aberdeen vowel-less rebrand mocked.” A Guardian article was titled “Too cool for schl? Linguists pour scorn on Abrdn rebranding.”

Some of the critics compared the rebranding to Flickr, Grindr, Scribd and Tumblr. In all of these cases, only the “e” – the second to last letter in the name – was dropped and it did not affect the readability of the name and only in the case of Scribd is there any confusion on how to pronounce the name. Is it “skrībd” or “skribd”?

Abrdn, of course, is not a social media platform, but a financial institution. As such, they cannot have a name that is perceived as flippant or casual. Financial institutions can have approachable, friendly monikers but these must be perceived as credible.

Abrdn could have simply returned to using Aberdeen, which at three vowels, was a fine name. At worst, it could have modified its name to Abrdeen, and it would have retained clarity of how it should be pronounced.

When the Bank of Montreal shortened its name several years ago to BMO, pronounced bē-mō, the explanation was that they were simply using the bank’s stock symbol. That sounded like a plausible reason, at least to the financial communities in Toronto and Montreal, but probably less so in Flin Flon, Manitoba. (The bank definitely couldn’t use a BM acronym without being the subject of much derision.)

That is one of the most important criteria for a name: that people can reasonably know how to pronounce it. Abrdn fails that test, and it will be interesting to watch what happens next. Will they backtrack now, like Coca-Cola did after its New Coke debacle, or will they hang on for a couple of years and then quietly rename the organization yet again?

(Full disclosure: While we designed the Ornge visual brand identity, our partners Instinct Brand Equity, created the name. It is an additional example of a name that works because everyone who reads it –either as part of the logo or as part of a text – immediately knows how to pronounce it.)

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On the topic of names, it is interesting to note that the Groupe Renault has also rebranded recently, and is now Renault Group, thereby anglicizing its name. The Renault Group name is used in all languages, including French. While not a universal practice, many of France’s top brands do not translate their names or principal brand elements. For example, Société Générale drops its accents in English text but does not translate its name to General Company. L’Oréal would not dream of dropping its accent; it is part of what gives this wordmark its cachet. Danone does not translate its tagline. Dassault Aviation is used both in French and English communications.

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Finally, Verizon Media has been sold to Apollo Global Management, Inc., an investment management group. Among the Verizon Media brands are Yahoo, Aol, and Huffpost. The press release of the sale also announced that the company name would change to Yahoo once the transaction is closed later this year. Selecting Yahoo as the corporate name is a reasonable decision, even if it is no longer viewed as a leading-edge technological brand, though Yahoo does have credibility as a media brand. The other option would have been to develop a completely new name for the company.

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Selecting a name for an organization is probably one of the most challenging tasks in branding. Hopefully companies, including Abrdn, will remember that roses have thrns.