For every major corporation that has reached the limelight of reached the limelight of public scrutiny for mismanagement of its financial affairs, hundreds more face crises of credibility. Why? A trend toward weak corporate name-identities has resulted in an alphabet soup of look-likes and sound alikes.
Overnight, things got suddenly changed, over-exposing of corporate credibility and governance, like Richter scales gone wild are thumping the global populace in sheer panic while shattering thousands of mega corporate name brands worldwide.
The good and sober companies of the world not only must weather these credibility quakes but also must project their clean image and stay protected during these monstrous shift of globs image and stay protected during these monstrous shifts of global image. Today, no matter how big or small the name-identity, it must face some of the principle Laws of Corporate Naming to cope with brand new challenges of corporate sobriety.
Laws of respectability
A corporate image and its name must offer a credible personality to its customers and shareholders alike; unless a corporate name is for a circus, the customers are seeking value and shareholders the protection of their assets, and neither is seeking a monkey show. A business name of any serious enterprise must have an alpha-character to qualify and gain respect projecting sound personality, honesty, integrity, reliability and stability. No room for randomly picked wild names like "Globe-a-Con,"Blacktower" "Tomorrow Inc." "Guarantee Inc" or just "Omelette".
Cute, pretentious or humorous names are out. Difficult and obscure names only confuse customers. Looks-alike or sound-alike names only kill marketing efforts. Twisted spellings hurt. search-ability. With major bankruptcies all over the other innocent businesses with similar names are getting trapped.
Currently amongst the modernized world the credibility of financial services has gone to the bottom, as false claims to exotic superiority failed to match the unexplainable performance. So are the related sectors, impacting doubts about every-thing, and also gone are the so-cherished and respected images of the past corporate identities of the past from hard core manufacturing to incred - ible services. Where and when will this train stop?
In the last decade, most banks simply adapted the init-ialization of their long twisted names and clearly short-changed them-selves by eliminating any distinct identity or a respectable image. The analysis of the top 1,000 banks of the world is nothing but the most thick, creamy alphabet soup one can dip into. Almost all of them suddenly decided in unison to simply just become initially named banks and now they are all just a bank, falling and crumbling under the stress tests.
If ever, and when the next round of a run on a major American or British bank will occur it will cause havoc for the other hundreds of innocent financial institutions which are still holding on to their very clean and sober affairs.
Whether the board likes it or not most corporate boardrooms are extremely scared to open a debate on this name image issue while this meltdown is taking this name identity crisis to the very top. A survey of major corporations around the world shows 87% of corporate names are seriously identical to other business names causing confusion and losing name-equity in the marketplace. The sooner they address this, the better.
Naseem Javed is author of "Naming for Power" and reconginsed as a world authority on building corporate image and creating global name indentities. Javed introduced the Laws of founded ABC Namebank, in Toronto and New York, a quarter century ago.
http://www.corporate-images.com/fckeditor_userfiles/file/AOR%20release-1.pdf
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