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Exclusive for Leasing News Why Financial Institutions Must Face The New Realities Of
This New Name-Economy by Naseem Javed
http://two.leasingnews.org/imanges_uael_wael/naseem.jpg Naseem Javed, author
of” Naming for Power, “founded ABC Namebank, 25 years ago,
www.abcnamebank.com speaker on global circuit and expert on corporate
image & name identities. Only yesterday, the
image of a bank was of a Roman arch, huge columns, and people working
behind bars. Today, the banks
and financial institutions are in your pockets, humming in palm-pilots,
PDAs, laptops, quietly completing
complex transactions, 24/7. Banks which all over the world discovered
globalization and e-commerce
way before these words came into our daily lingo, are not only caught
in a highly competitive marketplace but also are stuck with a lot of
old-fashioned names and ancient iconography. As the tidal wave
of this net-savvy culture becomes a global phenomena, the marketers of these financial services are faced with critical
issues of branding and naming. In the past, monolithically designed corner bank buildings displayed their
hard assets. Overly dramatic, long and monopolistic names engraved on the buildings provided the assurance
to the early settlers. E.g., The First Chartered Bank of the First Dominion, or The Amalgamated of the De-Amalgamated
Union Bank of Western Commerce, etc& Perhaps the society
needed such consolations from a handful of such name identities. Today, while feeding
pigeons in the Central Park you do your banking online with INGs
or the MBANXs alike. Now, there is a thick
forest of strange names out there, and thousands of online identities
are clashing with each other, causing confusion among names
and services. How Cyber-Branding
created this new Name-Economy Today, it’s all about
business names and their high visibility on global e-commerce,
instant accessibility on the net, quick search-ability on the
web, distinct memorability of names by overly strained populace, easy typability
by tired fingers, and pleasant vocalization of such names and brand experiences by the customers
all over the world. This new name-economy
is now the new driver of commerce and it is the only boost to the global
engine of cyber-branding. At this second, business names are
skating at bullet speed on this flat new earth, without borders, passports or time
zones. No delays, no barriers, no major costs, just access. The name identity of a business will
be the only measure on how a name works in a
micro-multi-national-formation in a maze of countries and cultures.
Under the new rules, a name works
like a KEY, being the only thing that can unlock the doors to this net-kingdom.
The competitive fog
is so thick, that without this key, a name identity is simply doomed. The old-fashioned
gigantic logos, splashing colors and stripes have nothing to do with
this access. This is all about
the structure of name and its impact and not about its type fonts or
shape of logos. As sixties were for burning flags
and bras, perhaps now is the time to burn most of the old marketing and branding books. Good names have
direct impact on corporate persona and positively influence customers, shareholders, media and
public opinion at large. Its time to explore the power of names, new laws of marketing and how to play
on this new one flat earth. It is a false rumor
that all good names have been taken .
Corporations believed
that all the star-quality names were taken, and had no choice but to
accept a silly, weird name. Nonsense.
The same big ad-agencies, which delivered world-class logos and commercials
somehow seriously, failed in naming. A false myth was created
to cover the lack of skills, and serious naming was farmed
out to skateboarding freelancers for a buck-a-name service. $500
got you 500 names. Where else would
names like “Oinga or Boinga’ come from? What ever happened to strange
names like PurpleFrog or PinkRhino?
Banking executives
all over the world are faced with new challenges, because E-commerce
visibility demands powerful URLs
and DotComs. Dotnets, dotinfos,
dotbizes are all easily forgotten and marketing suffers. Now, DotCom has become the only gold standard. Today, naming of a banking
product is not a simple creative exercise, rather a serious discipline where Rules of Naming and Laws of Corporate
Nomenclatures must be applied. There is a big difference
between a general branding exercise and a specialized naming expertise.
You can have a star quality and globally effective name with
an identical Dot.com within 48
hours. It is the easiest thing to do under the laws. Banks of North America
and most money institutions around the world have mainly three types
of names. 1- Long geographic
names; that seriously hurt national and international marketing. These
same long names get initialized
cause massive confusion with strange companies worldwide and are almost
impossible to find on the Net. 2- Words on a string;
names of things combined either accidentally due to M&A or other
strange reasons, sometimes making
no connections at all. 3- Initials; this
come about because the customers refuse to call out the long names. Diagnostically, solutions
are simple and here are three steps: First, determine
whether your names are Healthy, Injured or on a Life Support. It makes
no difference, whether these names
are of products, services, division or the main corporate names. To
a customer a name is a name, no matter
how it is offered. Healthy names are easy, unique and one of
a kind with global protection and a dotcom
Like CitiBank, SunTrust, etc& Injured names are long confusing
or initialized, like UCBH, CIBC, BB&T or RBCFG. While, Life Support
names are tangled into serious trademark or obvious name confusion problems.
Simple dictionary words also
cause a lot of confusion. There are too many Firsts, Uniteds, or Nationals
in just about every country and
there are too many compass directions, East, West, North, and South
and so on. Online or completely
virtual banks are also struggling for respectable and trustworthy
naming identities and most important short and sweet URLs&the
market is swamped with promotions, players like Everbank, Pc-banker,
ING-direct, Earthstar, Giant-bank, and
thousands others all chasing clicks and hits with a better URL, around
the globe. Second, quick analysis
and the forward steps, after this proper check up, is to get a mandate
to formally audit and analyze
the name so management can take a specific direction to modify them.
These names can be for cards, special accounts
or for various products or services. Most financial organizations have
dozens of different names and
many hundreds of domain names clashing each other all over the continents.
Its always better to have few strong and protected
names as champions than hundreds of injured players. Fast treatments
and more forward steps, it is
very easy, to reevaluate, reposition and rebuild a Name-Identity of
any product or a service, provided it is
done using the Laws of Naming. Third, you may already
be over funded. Great names will give you great results, with much less
dollars. Weaker names will cost
you ten times while bleeding your budgets and exhausting major resources
in the process. Names on life support will constantly
need oxygen. Theres no point in spending millions on weak names and
risk losing the race. You may already be
over funded. Just fix the KEY problem and open the gates. Banking is not the only industry facing this
impact of names its all over the globe and reaching the farthest corners.
The old ideas of
building brands using expansive billboards and banners are all now replaced
by fluid web pages, which are
being changed as you read along. URLs and domain names are now controlling
access to the entire corporations. In conclusion, there
are major naming issues that executives must tackle in order to cope
with the new challenges of this
new name-economy . .................................................................................................................................
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