As seen on TV... Part 3

This is officially going to be a series. I'm committing to extracting a brand-related lesson from each episode of Mary Queen of Shops, and half-way through the six programmes I'm confident I will!

This weeks' show was all about:
The importance of a name to a brand.

Three sisters were busy running a greengrocers - that had been trading for 115 years - into the ground. As you can imagine, there were a lot of issues: a lack commitment, a lack of experience and consequently, a lack of focus. Mary went in there and, with a lot of hard work, began to put things straight. But for me, the most interesting point was when Mary was presenting the new brand and identity to the sisters. As they were walking to the meeting the sisters all agreed that the one thing that couldn't change was the name. And to be fair, I agreed. The current name, Fosters, had a lot of history, recognition and - before the sisters got their hands on it - reputation. But Mary wanted to change it. And it was a stroke of genius.

Her suggestion was to change the name to The 3 Sisters. Two of them immediately liked it, the other one (the difficult one) pretty soon came round to it. You could see in their reaction that it immediately changed their perception of the shop. It changed from being something they had taken on when they bought it, to something that they owned. Something that belonged to them. It changed their relationship with the shop. For the first time they felt they had ownership, and with that responsibility.

And the name was key to that. It was opportunity, within all of the elements of the visual identity, to give the sisters (the client) something that was personal to them, and helped them to inject personality into the brand, and into the business. (This was reinforced with a fantastic photo shoot of the sisters, and a lot of fruit and veg).

Now, you don't have to change the name of a company, to change the way people see it. Marks & Spencer is 125 years old, but they have been fairly successful at defining what that name stands for to their customers in the 21st Century. But a name can be a very powerful tool for communicating with, and engaging with, your audience.

So think about the name of your company. What does it say about you? What do you want it to stand for? And what do you need to do to change that perception?

See you next week for the next programme. In the meantime, if you'd like to have a chat about any aspect of your brand, email jonathan@alderandalder.co.uk or call 01392 248107.