What's Your Name?

“Don’t call me Francis” said Francis Soyer in the movie Stripes.

Francis, by making a big deal about not wanting to be called Francis, ensured that everyone knew that his name was Francis—and that's what they would call him. Brands often believe that they can change their name and the public will go along with it. That may or may not be true

Sometimes if the brand name doesn’t have a clear place in the consumer’s mind and the change isn’t too disruptive, a name change can be relatively seamless. For example, when Datsun changed to Nissan in 1984, the public largely went along with it, at least in the United States. The company executed quickly and decisively. Everything from dealership signs to advertising changed and it was Nissan from that period forward. It wasn’t cheap: $500 million all told according to one source. But it was done and it aligned the company globally under one brand.

Meet Ram

The Chrysler Motor Company, now Fiat Chrysler, faced a similar challenge. Or at least imagined that they faced a challenge. In the midst of the recession of 2008, Chrysler decided to rebrand their most successful product at that time, the Dodge Ram pick-up trucks. The big reveal: they dropped Dodge from the name. The trucks were now just Ram.

According to Brandland USA, the logic behind the move was that “They wanted a separate brand, hip and athletic, and Dodge wasn’t doing it for them.” It’s even more odd looking back now, when the vehicles currently under the Dodge nameplate very much exemplify the athletic portion with the Challenger, Charger and 300C.

And worse, the result at the end of the day—everybody still calls the trucks Dodge Rams. A Google Trends report shows that searches for Dodge Ram far outpace any other variation.

tronc?

Thursday, June 2nd, 2016 the Tribune Publishing Co., announced that they have decided to bring their brand inline with the modern media consumer by renaming the company with what sounds like an internal company acronym: tronc. Yes, the lowercase spelling is intentional. It’s a shortened version of “Tribune online content.”

 According to Chairman Michael Ferro, “Our rebranding to tronc represents the manner in which we will pool our technology and content resources to execute on our strategy.”

The strategy, which is set to include machine learning and artificial intelligence to “deliver personalized content to our 60 million monthly users,” sounds impressive. But the name, and stepping completely away from a name with a respected legacy of publishing success, seems odd at best.

Time will tell. They might find out that names are serious business and meant to be respected. That respect isn’t something earned overnight. It’s also not something that people let go of instantly. Just ask Francis.

This post contains excerpts from the Wilson Rebranding Blog, My Name Is Ram … Friends Call Me Dodge.

Images and quote from the movie Stripes.