What's in a name?

You may have noticed that safe, stodgy retailer J.C. Penney is now dead. Rising in its place is hip retailer JCP, which is so cool that it produces commercials featuring Ellen DeGeneres.

Or, at least they changed the name. I learned via the RepMan (one of my favorite PR bloggers) that this change was born of the habit of CEO Ron Johnson and other company insiders of referring to the company as JCP in emails. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the company rebranded itself based on the equivalent of an inside joke.

I can't help but recall Radio Shack deciding that everyone should start calling it "The Shack," in a bid to revitalize its antiquated image. It's like your dad deciding he's going to start shopping at Abercrombie & Fitch in order to seem young and hip, but the attempt only draws attention to just how old he really is. (Hell, I'm almost 39, so it's like me deciding to shop at Abercrombie & Fitch to seem young and hip.)

Allow me to say it again: You. Do. Not. Own. Your. Brand. Your customers do. It's not what you say it is, but what they say it is, and no amount of changes to your name or your logo or any of your other branding will make a damn bit of difference unless your product or service changes along with it.

What Radio Shack and J.C. Penney -- excuse me, The Shack and JCP -- demonstrate is that people often ascribe far too much power to things like taglines and logos and even brand names, when those things are merely reflections of an organization's reputation, not the basis of it.

On the other hand, organizations also can underestimate the resonance of their own brand campaigns, and abandon them too quickly. This happens because people inside the organization, steeped as they are in it every day, grow tired of a logo, or a slogan, or a commercial much more quickly than the public at large, or even than the most devoted customers. Those people don't live and breathe the brand on a daily basis. Witness what happened when Gap trying to redesign its logo. Aside from the criticism of the mediocre result, the bungled effort demonstrated that people were still invested in what was perceived as a tired brand.

Ultimately, it is behavior that drives reputation, not graphic design. But changing a logo is a hell of a lot easier than changing behavior, sad to say.

The Y and The Shack

Via @RickM, I discovered a blog post about the YMCA's decision to rebrand itself "The Y" in recognition of how the organization is known by the public:

The Y is branding the non-profit from the eyes of their consumers for the first time, which is tactically a smart move. Some may see the shortening of the brand name as a result of blogs, but organizations tend to use acronyms or initialisms to replace full names, mainly because they’re easier to remember. (Think HP, SYSCO, 3M, GM, IBM, and BMW. I’d bet no one outside Sysco refers to the company as Systems and Service Company.) 

Viewed from that perspective, Radio Shack's move to recast itself as "The Shack" seems particularly lame. Has anyone ever said, "I'm going down to the Shack to pick up speaker wire"? I don't think so. A new name won't make people forget how outdated your stores are or how lousy your customer service is. Remember GM's quickly aborted campaign to stop referring to Chevrolet as Chevy? Pittsburghers, remember when University of Pittsburgh athletic director Steve Pederson decided he didn't want people to refer to the university as "Pitt" anymore?

The public had different ideas. I'm reminded of what my boss says -- Your brand is defined by how the outside world perceives you, not how you perceive yourself. Marketing and PR alone won't move the needle. You have to live your brand before you can talk about it.