The name of your company doesn’t make a single product, close a single sale or earn you a single bonus. It just sits there on your door, your sign and your business cards, staring back at you and making you torture yourself.
Until, inevitably, you start wishing to God you could change it. Or, you actually do. I get that. I changed the name of my company, mainly because it was named after a service line we no longer offered. There’s no sense being Bob’s Screws if you’ve stopped selling screws. Of course, Bob could rename the company Bob’s Sales, which doesn’t tell anyone anything, but at least it gives Bob a little more flexibility if he decides next year to switch his primary offering from water filters to broccoli.
No one really cares what Bob’s company is named nor does anyone seem to care very much what my company is named. Marshall Field’s is another story.
In Chicago, Marshall Field’s is no more. Renamed Macy’s by a corporate parent that sees more brand power in the latter name, a Chicago institution has been stripped of its historic nomenclature. So life goes on, right?
Are you crazy? This is Chicago. People here have been known to riot at the opportunity to burn disco records. Why would anyone expect the renaming of a venerable department store to go over well?
Nothing’s been destroyed yet, but the City of Broad Shoulders isn’t satisfied to merely shrug at the renaming of Marshall Field’s to Macy’s. Forty-eight-year-old Amelia James refuses to enter the store now that it’s been renamed. She thinks her late grandmother would be upset. Christine Grant, 31, says Chicago history is being defiled. She won’t go into Macy’s even to use a $100 gift certificate. (Someone should tell her that’s like giving the store $100 for nothing. Somehow, though, I doubt she’ll listen.)
A bunch of Chicago shoppers took to the streets wearing green—the traditional color of Marshall Field’s—to protest the decision by Federated Department Stores, which owns both retail properties and has announced it doesn’t care what the Marshall Field’s mavens think. Federated wants to establish a single national brand identity and believes Macy’s has the star power necessary to take the nation by storm. So it’s Macy’s, Macy’s, Macy’s, from coast to coast.
If Grandma James has a problem with it, Federated figures, she’s dead anyway. Just like Marshall Field’s.
People in business get funny about names. So do their customers—but for completely different reasons.
Customers hate name changes because they get used to names. They feel loyal to names. Everything in the store could remain 100 percent the same—merchandise, prices, employees, layout—but if you change the words on the front of the building, they’ll dress in green and denounce you as an infidel. Green shirt for $17 at Marshall Field’s? How lovely. Green shirt for $17 at Macy’s? Take your shirt and die!
Business owners have an entirely different relationship with names. Customers think of the name of a business when they go to that business. How often is that? Even your neighborhood supermarket only has the pleasure of your presence for an hour or so each week. You don’t really care what the name is so long as it feels familiar to you. Heck, someone could probably name a grocery chain Piggly Wiggly, and people wouldn’t mind shopping there. (What do you mean someone did?)
But when you own the business, you live with the name all day, every day. That means you have way too much time to think about it. “Johnson Shipping. Hmm. I’m Johnson. We do shipping. We’re Johnson Shipping. Makes sense. OK. I’ll stop thinking about it now. Wait. Dear God! Is that a good name? What if it’s not? Maybe we should be Johnson Shipping Services. Because we care about service! But what good is service if it doesn’t solve your problem? Maybe we should be Johnson Shipping Solutions! McBucky!”
McBucky was having a perfectly pleasant day telling people they couldn’t talk to the boss because he was supposed to be busy doing CEO stuff. This was too good to last.
“You wanted to see me, boss?”
“McBucky! What if our name isn’t right?”
McBucky starts trying to remember where he put Mr. Johnson’s medication.
“McBucky, we need a study.”
“A study?”
“What does our name suggest to our market? What if it’s misleading? What if it doesn’t touch the hot buttons?”
“Boss, your meds are in the top left-hand drawer.”
“McBucky, call together the marketing committee! Send out a request for proposal! Collect input from the board! We’re getting a new name!”
McBucky salutes. This will keep him busy for six to nine months at least. What does McBucky do around here anyway? Hey! Shut up! He’s heading up the corporate identity project.
Thousands of other McBuckys are heading up similar projects all over America. Every hospital in the nation is in the process of changing its last name from “Hospital” to “Health.” One said it did so because the new name was “more manageable.” (How do you manage a name? Shorten it!)
Every transportation company is now “Logistics.” Auto repair shops are calling themselves “Automotive Diagnostics.” And every other business just affixes the word “Solutions” to the rest of its name.
Cheap Crap Solutions. Why not? It works for everything else.
“Wait!” screams Amelia James of Chicago. “What happened to Cheap Crap Mart? My grandmother would be appalled to see ‘Mart’ replaced with ‘Solutions.’ Appalled!”
Tough. Grandma’s dead, and McBucky’s corporate identity committee had to come up with something after six months of off-site retreats. Cheap Crap Solutions it is!
Until the boss gets tired of it.
