Sometimes renaming things can get out of hand.
It seems that too often, companies try to breathe new life into a product or brand by renaming it.
In all too many cases, however, those efforts fail to yield the desired results.
On the one side are people who think it’s a fantastic idea (usually this is called the ‘Marketing Department’).
They claim that the old name had problems, gave the wrong impression or was out of touch with modern consumers.
On the other side are people who think it’s a terrible idea. This group is normally known as CONSUMERS.
If they are used to the old name, it can be to abandon it. Regular users may lose faith in the product, or not even know it is the same thing and stop using it altogether.
Often, a renaming occurs when a product or service has recieved negative press coverage.
This may be a justified course of action in order to re-establish the brand.
Other times, when sales are flagging, a product name can be changed (or chosen) to take advantage of buzzwords and terms that the “modern consumers” are using.
There has been no bigger example of his than the recent “Isnack 2.0″ incident in Australia, by Kraft foods.
This was a spectacularly massive fail which proved that Marketing people are very often out of touch with the very people they claim to be able to interact with – the general public.
Here are some helpful tips for any marketers who may be reading this:
– putting an “i” or an “e” in front of a word does not make it modern or futuristic
– web 2.0 is nothing more then a buzz word
– not EVERYTHING has to have a Facebook fanpage
– do not add “TW” to the front of your product name to try to appeal to twitter users. (I have mentioned this before)
– social networks are about the INTERACTION, not the FOLLOWER numbers
– not every new campaign needs to be crowd-sourced. (Try doing something yourself & stop being so lazy, ffs)
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Reza makes these fun zombie inspired illustrations.
So, take a few minutes and enjoy the undead goodness.