Naming is so tough because it is so subjective and open to challenge. When you are a national telco, this becomes even harder.
For the folks at Voda/One, this is a huge deal, and I can assure you that in the lead-up to this, a lot of work will have been done, and I would guess that ‘One’ probably wasn’t the name that was always there at the front of the list. I would imagine this has been in the works for years, and in the journey towards this change, an organisation like Voda/One will have gone back and forth, assessed, debated, and planned a change exhaustively.
They will have seen the possible risks, and they will have assessed them properly. Their extensive trademark, competitive and legal searches will have picked things up. They will have taken a pragmatic view and evaluated the likelihood of a minor right-wing connotation hijacking what is essentially a well-used and understood construct. A construct that will carry them well into the future. They will have seen what the bigger picture is and how after time, through storytelling and demonstration, the idea of unification will shine through and carry an organisation to a vision that I would be sure will be clear and robust.
What is interesting and always happens is that people bring their perspective and sometimes baggage to a new name at face value. The reaction is instant, and it always comes with feeling. I repeatedly observe that people believe that the name as first encountered, based on their perspective, is what it is and will always be in their mind.
It is those actions that will create meaning in our minds and is that which will bend and warp our minds to stop seeing that name as it was when we first saw it, but how we see it as a shorthand for the careful work that will have been done over the years.
Just think of brands that are acronyms that have meaning and personality; Qantas, IBM, NZI… they are just letters put together, and now they are titans with characters, meaning and value.
If you ever find yourself changing a brand name, take stock and leave lots of time because this is not straightforward. If you are doing this for an international brand, challenges become multiplied. Usually, with a rebrand, design is involved as well, and the name always takes much longer than anything else. Naming holds up the entire process and adds risk because if you progress a design on a name still waiting on the trademark challenges, you are a wee bit open.
If you are dealing with a range of product/service systems, you will need a well-sorted brand architecture that shows the relationships and roles for all parts.
At a broad level, when you are developing naming systems for product or service ranges, there are four main naming types:
Each has pros and cons, ranging from the ability to trademark to flexibility across a growing offering.
Once you understand all the parts and how everything will fit together, there are some practical things that you will need to consider, as generally, people ask three main questions when navigating:
You will need to consider how flexible your system is and where you will run out of runway with it. Considering the design, colour and visual system can help do some lifting alongside the names to assist with navigation.
It will be interesting to see how far our friends at Voda/One go with their name and if it will exist as a theme further down into the broader product and service system. This could be an opportunity to further extend and embed meaning into the master brand name itself.
We get smaller brands ready for the next step, big brands back on track, and we build brands from the ground up.
We get smaller brands ready for the next step, big brands back on track, and we build brands from the ground up.