What’s in a name?
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July 17, 2015
The 3 C’s in Sales
August 20, 2015
Over the last 27 years I’ve been involved in many revamps to company brands, hundreds probably…mostly in the transportation sector. When it comes to physically changing the name, I’ve done much less. Why? In the B2B world, the equity in your company lies in the name, not the physical look of your brand. As a matter of fact, you could change the look of your brand daily with very little negative effect other than the devastating impact on your wallet.
Look at entrepreneur Mike Andlauer and if you don’t know Mike, you aren’t a hockey fan or in transportation. I worked at the same company with him 30 years ago. Probably the most successful rise to fame and fortune I’ve personally seen. Like many start-ups, the name of his company was based on his surname and then shortened to the 3 letter acronym ATS. He designed the original logo himself and though emotionally attached to it, I would suggest graphic artist was not his most significant achievement. Still, I learned a valuable lesson from the experience. Branding matters, but the product or service you are branding matters a whole lot more. And, like ATS, the physical look of the brand can evolve with time and serve to better represent the company’s overall perception and professionalism.
With most of the companies I’ve dealt with, very little thought was put into the initial name or branding but equity is created none the less. With time, the name surpasses its original intent or reason for being. If you think you have chosen poorly and need to change your name, try to do it early when your client base is small enough to reach out to and protect. On the other hand, changing a well-respected name is a high risk and costly venture.
At the end of the day, marketing is about bold, memorable moves balanced with:
- A strategic look to the future
- Respect for the goodwill tied to a long standing brand name
- A generous amount of caution
- A minimal amount of ego
I started Palmer Marketing at age 34 in January of 1988. I had 2 kids in diapers and a crazy idea about running my own company. I came from an entrepreneurial family and had no good reason to believe it wasn’t possible and as it happens, it was.
I’m definitely a country girl. I didn’t grow up in an actual town, village or hamlet. It was more like the middle of somewhere along Highway 28, surrounded by trees. Many thanks goes to my high school art teacher, Mr. Edwards, for inspiring me to choose this career path. With the realization that I actually could create art for a living, college lured me away from country life to the big city. Kitchener, to be exact, to study Graphic Design & Advertising at Conestoga College. Talk about beginning an adventure and a culture shock! Not staring at people with purple, green or some other wildly coloured hair was a bit of a challenge. City buses (lol thinking back), who knew they only stopped on the same side of the street as the bus stop sign!? Lesson learnt.
I love my work like I love summer. Why not? Summer is when I get to play my favorite sport—golf! Playing artist is a lot like playing golf. You need to be calm and cool under pressure if you ever hope to keep the ball in play; that’s rare for an artist. My best shots happen when I talk less and concentrate more; that’s not so rare for an artist.
I am the 8th of 9 children raised in Essex County outside of Windsor, Ontario. We lived on a gravel road, no sidewalks and our greatest adventures were in our own backyard. I still have friends I made in grade 1 and continue to stay in touch today. After graduating from the University of Windsor with a Bachelor of Commerce degree, I moved to the big city of Toronto and have worked most of my career in the printing industry. I got to know the folks at Palmer Marketing as a key supplier to them for over a decade.
To say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree would be an understatement in my family; at least when it comes to picking a career path. There isn’t a person in my immediate family that hasn’t at some point or another worked in the IT field. I guess there’s something in our DNA that pulls us towards computers.
