Just today I found a question and topic posed in one of the many communications, marketing, and PR groups that I am part of, and for some odd reason chose to dredge up some thoughts based on my own hard-won experience on the many battlefields of corporate naming and identity.
THE QUESTION AND TOPIC:
"Picking an Intriguing Name for Your Startup"
"You have a great idea for your startup company. The idea of going into business for yourself has been brewing for a long time and you are finally ready to jump. The name of your company is key."
HERE I GO:
There are a lot of considerations in the naming process. (Let's think branding. And, man, if there is any horse that is more throughout beaten to death in the marketing and communications world, it's "branding". Everyone today is a "Branding Expert", and everything under the firmament has to be "Branded"). Some of the usual ways of going about naming: The descriptive; the names of the principal people involved; combined names of shotgun-wedded and merged companies; the metaphoric; the artificial (often co-joined words or syllables representing people or specific markets; technologies; industries or just stuff that sounds like some kind of brand personality a company wants, or just throw-together locked-in elements), and the whimsical or downright odd and catchy. Often the industry itself has certain popular standards. The new "friendly" usually consumer-oriented products often drift to the fruits, vegetables, the lifestyle and characteristics of the target market. There are always locations to throw in if it seems appropriate. A lot of companies go for the metaphoric. A company might want to be deathly serious and conservative, neutral or goofball, and the name may or may not have anything to do with anything other than communicating the personality of the company which might be incredibly vapid and boring or hip or strange. There are also the highly-encoded and cryptic names, often the brain children of some over-educated genius and make no sense to the average human, but is some kind of play on words requiring a considerable amount of explaining (as if anyone cares) (aren't we clever?).
And then there is the ever-popular "logo", which is can be a rendering of the name in typeface or artwork which usually carries some graphic representation of the purpose, market, product(s), location, or attitude of a company. The convention seems to be that anyone equipped with a lethal weapon called PhotoShop can create a "logo". That includes CEO's, their 13 year-olds, and house-bound creatives who make $25 via Guru.com for a "logo". Names get "logo-ized" with typeface and colorful artwork, or the art element floats around the name, or has some kind of positioning law dictating where it should all fit and codified in massive dust-collectors called Style Guides.
In any case, up pops the thrill ride of creating URL's and actually registering the trade name and graphics as distinct and legally protected things. Funny, just this morning I was talking to a guy about a stupid logo we both observed which was fancied by a small company and incorporated what is probably the most over-used logo element in the annals of logo-dom: the stylized globe (universally known as " the meatball" in the Legal and Logo worlds). The late Pan American airline first employed one of these things and if you actually do a search today you will find tens of thousands of them registered as trademarks; each with a nuance undetectable by the human eye but for some reason distinct enough to qualify for legal protection. These days the "Nike" swoosh has taken the lead as the most unoriginal logo element in logo development; tormented daily around the world by mediocre designers in search of some trademarkable graphic mutation with the "halo" effect that the Nike swoosh is thought to deliver.
Of course, if you flout the ugly process of researching and attempting to legally secure your name and logo, then there is the risk that a cease-and-desist letter will arrive one day, sometimes from as far away as Uruguay if you play there, or worse a law suit. Maybe it's worth the risk when you are starting out, but not when you've produced all kinds of stuff with the unprotected name and logo you have fallen in love with. So perhaps the cost of some up-front legal fees is worth it compared to the pain of having to flip a name and logo that you've invested a lot in. That's the brand "value" thing you've just brushed up against. Or you can fight the lawsuit. That's always fun.
Or the clever route might be to settle with the Uruguayans by just selling the damn thing at a profit and go on to greener pastures with a new revenue stream from intellectual property.
So naming can certainly be a non-stop laugh riot and not for the faint-of-heart. Final thought: don't ask a bunch of people for ideas. You'll be all over the map. It's fine if you get a couple of contenders and make a decision, but don't make the final decision democratic. Go the dictator route, make it "that's that", "because I said so", or
"thanks very much", then don't waste any more time and "Just do It".
Oh my, we've just entered the mad, mad, mad, mad world of tag lines!!
The torture never ends.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Mergers & Acquisitions: Don't Worry, Don't Panic
The other day a young lady, who happens to be in HR, dropped by in something of a panic. It appears that she was about to be swept up in her first M&A transaction, and asked for a bit of sage advice on what to expect. I realized to my astonishment that somehow I weathered upwards of 40 of these beasts during my checkered career in corporate PR and communications, and, flooded with memories of the less than sublime, I nonetheless undertook a short dissertation on what I discern to be common to all that I have encountered. I don’t know why but I feel compelled to share.
1. Communications is usually the last to find out about these deals, and I know that is true of other functions, perhaps including HR. Don’t take it personally. M&A people treasure their cloak and dagger stuff. But it’s for good reason, especially when it involves a public company.
2. Be prepared to scramble to get the first communications to the priority audiences the minute after announcement. Timing is very important. All priority audiences need to be told at the same time, but there may be a “night before” disclosure to the executives and managers.
3. The priority audiences should be: employees, media, shareholders/analysts, customers, suppliers and government bodies if necessary.
4. Create a calendar of when everything is supposed to happen pre and post-announcement.
5. Make sure there is an open channel to the other company to sort through the details as far in advance as possible. And get to know your counterparts asap. Create a daily teleconference for all necessary parties to share status and action items. Prepare a Q&A which will include questions relating to the most important concerns of each audience. The M&A people are generally focused on their due diligence which is mostly financial in nature but it does include things like executive changes. In my experience, not a lot goes into thoughts about communications, and particularly in branding the acquired company after the transaction.
6. Keep in mind that mergers and/or acquisition can take years to fully complete in terms of all the details involved in integration. So don’t get frustrated if all the “I’s” are not dotted nor the “t’s” crossed at announcement.
7. Above all the tone of communications should be in reassuring key audiences that business will be as usual for the moment, and any new developments will be communicated asap. Be aware that the first concern of employees will be whether they’ll be fired or laid off, so you’ve got to address that up front without committing to anything, often best in the Q&A than in any written statement. Something like: “Our integration team has commenced its work to ensure a smoothtransition as our companies merge, and we will announce developments as they occur”. Thenyou have to say all the good things about the transaction – expands the market, adds new capabilities or geographies, adds new talent, fuels growth – and then praise the other company for its prior successes that led to the decision to get married. The master Q&A should have sections for each function that would be potentially affected.
8. In HR, as in IT, Payroll, Finance, Treasury, Product Development, Manufacturing, Sales, Marketing, etc., etc., many things will need ironing out over time. Some will be slower, some faster than others.
9. Probably one of the biggest challenges will be the cultural ones. Employees of every company have an allegiance to their own companies and their identities. Be patient, and try and make everything as painless as possible.
10. You’ll have to put together Town Meetings, frequent postings on the Intranets (if the companies have them), etc., but down the road.
11. Remember, some things don’t want to be integrated at all, sometimes the brands themselves will remain autonomous.
There is plenty more of course. Executives have to be on deck at all times after the announcement to answer questions from all audiences, and the press is of course always prone to short lead times because of their editorial schedules. Try to time the announcement so the press can have a chance to feature the news online that evening or the next day.
Above all, don’t fret or worry, things will always work themselves out, just be prepared with the essentials when the gun goes off. Keep communicating! Get some sleep after announcement.
Surely there are other tidbits I’ve forgotten. If I remember them, I will pass them along. If you have some other thoughts, by all means drop them into this discussion. Otherwise I’ll just be content with the hot flashes of my war stories, and there are plenty!
(c)2010 Michael Gury
1. Communications is usually the last to find out about these deals, and I know that is true of other functions, perhaps including HR. Don’t take it personally. M&A people treasure their cloak and dagger stuff. But it’s for good reason, especially when it involves a public company.
2. Be prepared to scramble to get the first communications to the priority audiences the minute after announcement. Timing is very important. All priority audiences need to be told at the same time, but there may be a “night before” disclosure to the executives and managers.
3. The priority audiences should be: employees, media, shareholders/analysts, customers, suppliers and government bodies if necessary.
4. Create a calendar of when everything is supposed to happen pre and post-announcement.
5. Make sure there is an open channel to the other company to sort through the details as far in advance as possible. And get to know your counterparts asap. Create a daily teleconference for all necessary parties to share status and action items. Prepare a Q&A which will include questions relating to the most important concerns of each audience. The M&A people are generally focused on their due diligence which is mostly financial in nature but it does include things like executive changes. In my experience, not a lot goes into thoughts about communications, and particularly in branding the acquired company after the transaction.
6. Keep in mind that mergers and/or acquisition can take years to fully complete in terms of all the details involved in integration. So don’t get frustrated if all the “I’s” are not dotted nor the “t’s” crossed at announcement.
7. Above all the tone of communications should be in reassuring key audiences that business will be as usual for the moment, and any new developments will be communicated asap. Be aware that the first concern of employees will be whether they’ll be fired or laid off, so you’ve got to address that up front without committing to anything, often best in the Q&A than in any written statement. Something like: “Our integration team has commenced its work to ensure a smoothtransition as our companies merge, and we will announce developments as they occur”. Thenyou have to say all the good things about the transaction – expands the market, adds new capabilities or geographies, adds new talent, fuels growth – and then praise the other company for its prior successes that led to the decision to get married. The master Q&A should have sections for each function that would be potentially affected.
8. In HR, as in IT, Payroll, Finance, Treasury, Product Development, Manufacturing, Sales, Marketing, etc., etc., many things will need ironing out over time. Some will be slower, some faster than others.
9. Probably one of the biggest challenges will be the cultural ones. Employees of every company have an allegiance to their own companies and their identities. Be patient, and try and make everything as painless as possible.
10. You’ll have to put together Town Meetings, frequent postings on the Intranets (if the companies have them), etc., but down the road.
11. Remember, some things don’t want to be integrated at all, sometimes the brands themselves will remain autonomous.
There is plenty more of course. Executives have to be on deck at all times after the announcement to answer questions from all audiences, and the press is of course always prone to short lead times because of their editorial schedules. Try to time the announcement so the press can have a chance to feature the news online that evening or the next day.
Above all, don’t fret or worry, things will always work themselves out, just be prepared with the essentials when the gun goes off. Keep communicating! Get some sleep after announcement.
Surely there are other tidbits I’ve forgotten. If I remember them, I will pass them along. If you have some other thoughts, by all means drop them into this discussion. Otherwise I’ll just be content with the hot flashes of my war stories, and there are plenty!
(c)2010 Michael Gury
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