|
|
Brand Anew - renaming of company - Brief Article
|
WHEN A COMPANY NO LONGER DOES WHAT ITS NAME PROMISES, IT'S TIME TO CHANGE NAMES
AND MARKET LIKE HELL.
|
|
|
|
Should e-companies adopt brand names that are clear or curious? Entrepreneurs banking
on the curious must use marketing to get consumers over the hump of their head-scratching
monikers. |
|
|
|
BEFORE |
|
|
|
IN 1997, MININGCO.COM, a directory of Web sites on everyday topics such as personal
finance, pregnancy and pets, set up shop with the goal of beating the search engines
in the business of pointing people toward information. The name meant they'd mine
the Net to unearth nuggets of info for you. But as the firm evolved, says John Caplan,
the rebranding specialist (now president of About Network) hired in 1999 to orchestrate
a makeover, "the mining metaphor no longer applied to what the brand stood for."
MiningCo.com morphed from offering directories to destinations--sites dedicated
to each topic and staffed by guides. |
|
|
|
DURING |
|
|
|
CAPLAN AND HIS TEAM meditated on what to call the retooled enterprise, which offered
information "about" 700 different topics. "That really became the essence," says
Caplan--and the inspiration for the new name, About Inc., with a subtitle: The Human
Internet. |
|
|
|
AFTER |
|
|
|
WITH CONCENTRATED MARKETING to sear the new brand into the consciousness of potential
users--and advertisers-About.com has prospered. From a rank of 127th in the number
of unique visitors monthly, it rose to sixth over a period of two years. Still does
avoiding the risk of befuddlement really help capture the attention of Web suffers?
Would "All About..." have hinted better? Should eBay have been Auctions.com? And
what exactly does Monster.com do, anyway? |
|
|
|
$68 BILLION PLUS: total venture Capital investment in 2000 |
|
|
|
|
