Here's the second installment of the editorial columns, this one from October 2004. It was in response to several stories that featured in that month's issue regarding company name changes. The page one lead featured Ideal Standard's design director Robin Levien giving his opinions on the concept of 'wellness' - the tissue-thin marketing speak used to describe anything in the bathroom intended to aid relaxation, such as whirlpools and spas. His exact description? "A load of bollocks".
COMMENT OCTOBER 2004
In order to provide flimsy metaphors for the kbb industry, you know how I like to share the intimate details of my life with the readership. I don't know what it is, I just can't help myself. In this spirit, I have a confession to make to you all. No, it's not that one, it was never proved and I maintain that telescope was used strictly for astronomy.
I'd like to admit that my middle name is Graeme.
Yes, I know. Don't blame me, I had little say in it at the time it was chosen. But what does that name say to you? Look at my picture....do I look like a Graeme? I've always thought (ok, wished) I looked more like a Clint, Harrison or Colt but gave up on it a long time ago as there's nothing I can do about it.
So here comes the flimsy metaphor - what's in a name? That's the question coming up several times through the news this month. In this age of branding and targeted marketing, is the actual name of the product or company becoming equally, or perhaps more, important than performance?
Merloni Elettrodomestici, named after founder and chairman Vittorio Merloni, has rebadged itself Indesit Company in order to 'meet the need to communicate effectively and with immediacy the strong links between the company and its brands'. And at the other end of the scale, although equally important to its owners, Ceramic Prints Ltd is now trading as the CP Group because 'we are now engaged in so much more than printing tiles'.
I'm not suggesting for a moment that company name changes are there to cover up anything, but the question is how much it really matters what the company is called as long as its products are good and all your customers know it? A Snickers is no more tasty than a Marathon.
This equally applies to kbb product names too. Look through this magazine and you'll see exotic names dreamed up by marketing men probably ten minutes before the brochure was printed. Kansas, Gullwing, Beachcomber, Xenon, Deauville and a hundred others, all very evocative and indicative of the design aesthetics but if they're good products would they sell more or less if they were called XP-ZC34?
This is also Robi Levien's point about the use of vague phrases like 'wellness' and 'designer' to describe products, the words are ultimately meaningless without proper facts to back them up.
With so many products now coming from overseas, and particularly the Far East, consumers are confused by the origin and quality of products. Producing a glossy brochure is easy, as is giving products an interesting name, but customers want to know the facts about what they're buying, not the marketing blurb. The physical quality of a product will always win out in the long run and that's when the name recognition will actually mean something.
I leave you with a bit of marketing speak taken word-for-word from a recent press release sent from Italy describing a new 'designer' bath - "A hemisphere with two cuts is a coloured back stall, an object that jokes with colours and materials, which simbolyse wrapper and soul".
If anyone has any idea what that means, let me know
