Decide, then tell people. Sounds simple, huh?
So why do so many organizations insist on saying who they USED to be? The most egregious example I have seen in a long time is Accretive Solutions.
An aside, that seems like a horribly negative name, perhaps that’s why the keep telling us (on NPR within the last hour) that they used to be Horn, Murdoch, Cole.
Not the biggest of issues you might think. I’d agree, except that they changed their name in mid-2007.
Here we are more than TWO years later, and they are still telling the audience who they USED to be.
Not what they stand for, why I should get to know them, but who they haven’t been for over TWO years. They need a new marketing lead! And their CEO should be firing people. This stuff is not that hard,
You do work hard to define the business you are in, the way you relate to your customers, what your products and services are; and then you tell them the story, over and over again. You do NOT harp back to who, or what, you used to be.
Nobody cares. It’s not that legacy should be forgotten, but there are few, very few, organizations for whom it should, or can, be the marketing route to the future.
I spoke about one of the best name changes I had seen here. As I said then, maybe they were just Lucky….