As someone who has been involved in many branding projects, it is amusing to see all the negative commentary on the rebrand. This is human nature 101. Everyone always hates rebrands. In fact I am willing to bet that the executives who eventually bought into this new name also hated the new name when they heard it.
Whenever we presented a new name to a company that wanted to be rebranded, we always asked them not to provide any feedback on the name until they had given it a day or two to sink in. Almost invariably the feedback was, “I hated it when I first heard it, but it has really grown on me.”
Examples of names that would be very easy to criticize on first hearing that have become incredibly successful brands abound. Google is a stupid and juvenile-sounding name. Now it’s a verb. I won’t waste your time with more examples.
Related: ConvertKit rebranded to seva and then fairly promptly rolled the decision back based on customer feedback. https://convertkit.com/staying-convertkit gives details. I was pleased at the reversion, though for completely different reasons: I think the rebrand was foolish purely because it went from a memorable name with meaning (even if that meaning didn’t exactly match the purpose for all of their customers) to a four-letter word that’s meaningless to most people and says nothing at all about the company or product.
wow, i wasnt even aware of that rebrand. seva sounds so awful, whereas im already super invested in the ConvertKit story. good reversal of decision there.
What value is there in renaming anything? You've said that out that "Google is a stupid and juvenile-sounding name." but you imply it doesn't matter - so what's the point?
Isn't rebranding what companies do when they run out of ideas (one of my old employers changed its name at least 3 times because... why? I doubt they have a viable product yet. A name change isn't going to help).
Pure speculation but: "Zeit" is a super common German word. So if you want to protect your brand internationally but there's a major newspaper in one of the biggest economies that is also called exactly "Zeit" - that's kind of bad. Vercel is much more unique. You can't get https://twitter.com/zeit because it's the newspaper. You can't get zeit.de because it's the newspaper. You could get zeit.com but you'd compete with the newspaper for it. Picking a brand that doesn't have as much baggage could be convenient down the line.
> What value is there in renaming anything? You've said that out that "Google is a stupid and juvenile-sounding name." but you imply it doesn't matter - so what's the point?
To be clear, my sentence was slightly syntactically incorrect: what I meant was, "Google is a stupid- and juvenile-sounding name." It's not a stupid name, but it is stupid-sounding, at least until you get used to it. But it's far from a stupid name. For instance: it's spelled the way it sounds, it's memorable, and it sounds like a verb. Those are all pluses, and yes, they matter.
I once worked for a company called Internet Enterprises. Terrible name. It sounds like a shell company with dusty offices on a service road off a highway.
I once owned a design agency called factor[e] design initiative (I didn't found it or name it). Poor brand story: the "e" was chosen because at the time (late 90s) "e" was like "i" from a few years ago. No other good reason. It was spelled all lower-case, like e. e. cummings (annoying for a company). It had weird punctuation marks in it. And how do you pronounce it? I would commonly hear "factory" or "factor-E" (correct). I used to joke it was "fac-TOR-ay" (say that with an Italian accent).
A few years in, we rebranded to Parallel. Much better: regular spelling and capitalization, dictionary word and a good brand story (alignment / working "in parallel" with clients, etc.) At times, in conversations with clients, they would inadvertently use the brand: "We'd like to work in parallel with you..."
This stuff matters—a lot! It's easier to attract customers and employees with a great brand. And the brand provides a consistent touch point - a "north star" if you will - for what the company stands for.
There are various types of rebranding that may or may not involve renaming. However, with respect to renaming specifically, it often also comes about because your company name now bears no relationship to what you actually do.
To take a random example from a past life, NL Industries used to be the Nation Lead Company but, while they still have some involvement in pigments, they don't actually do anything related to lead any more AFAIK. (This is a major reason companies switch from a descriptive name to just some letters.)
After the renaming you mentioned of NL, was there any lasting measurable business effect such as change in turnover, profit, new customers, anything at all?
I will say that it's easy to say that none of this stuff matters at all. And it's very hard to quantify among a zillion other variables. Is it crucial in the grand scheme of things? Probably not. But things like brand awareness and brand perception can matter--at least at the margins.
>Isn't rebranding what companies do when they run out of ideas (one of my old employers changed its name at least 3 times because... why?
This is what I figure. That or they want people to forget about lousy things they've done. Dunno if it was ever true, but hearing the rumour that Kentucky fried chicken switched to KFC to avoid being associated with fried chicken and the health issues surrounding trans fats that were a big deal at the time sort of stuck with me.
Personally, I'd trust the company that's kept the same boring name for a decade over one that's renamed themselves several times in the same period.
Yeah, a rebranding will always sound weird at first. The question is whether the upside is better in the long-term - time will tell. Vercel does sound good (though does sound close to parcel for me and also reads like vermicelli a bit).
For "Zeit" I am biased, since I speak German and it translates to "time" (and there's a large circulation newspaper called "Zeit"... well, actually "Die Zeit" which reads funny in English - but actually fits for this rebranding :-) ).
When "Open BC" (Germany's LinkedIn, BC stands for Business Club) renamed itself to "Xing" 14 years ago, it felt really weird to me. Though I think by now most people on the Xing platform won't even remember the old name. And in 5 years time, people who weren't even born when it was rebranded will start joining the platform.
Neither, really. Just for me it has a meaning already. Like if a service is called "Time" or "Hour". It's not bad or good, I just already associated with something else.
My personal opinion is that every great company can have one re-brand in their lifetime, and many have. To name a few: BackRub, Cadabra, Doorbot, Justin.tv
The software was named Backrub, before they started the company. I wouldn't call it a rebrand, since they never used that as a company name. Almost every product has a pre-release name that was never used as a brand.
Whenever we presented a new name to a company that wanted to be rebranded, we always asked them not to provide any feedback on the name until they had given it a day or two to sink in. Almost invariably the feedback was, “I hated it when I first heard it, but it has really grown on me.”
Examples of names that would be very easy to criticize on first hearing that have become incredibly successful brands abound. Google is a stupid and juvenile-sounding name. Now it’s a verb. I won’t waste your time with more examples.