Brand name game

Success in the market ultimately comes down to the strength of the brand. But the rapid pace of corporate mergers is eliminating many brand names.

By ROBERT TRIGAUX

© St. Petersburg Times, published November 21, 1999

Company brands used to be the bedrock of corporate America. Now they seem to last as long as a piece of chewing gum.

Tampa Bay consumers have had an especially transient experience with corporate brands. In seven short years, for example, a customer of Tampa-based First Florida Banks became (by acquisition) a customer of Barnett Banks, then a customer (by acquisition) of NationsBank and soon (by name change) a customer of Bank of America.

Brand change in telecommunications is no less brisk. GTE Corp., a stalwart local telephone company for decades, is being acquired by the more aggressive Bell Atlantic Corp. in a deal that is expected to be completed early next spring. That transaction means the end not only to the GTE name but also the Bell Atlantic name. The new company wants a new name unencumbered by past reputations or regional limitations.

GTE. Bell Atlantic. Barnett. NationsBank. Florida Progress. Plymouth. Western Union. Pan Am. Westinghouse. E.F. Hutton. Shearson Loeb Rhoades. McDonell Douglas. Corporate brands that required decades to develop and millions to market, brands that dominated regional markets or their industries, often for much of this century, are disappearing at breakneck speed.

Brands are not casual inventions. Most consumers will choose a Coke over some unknown cola. Most families will stop at McDonald's rather than at some no-name burger joint. Computer shoppers tend to look for the "Intel Inside" message on PCs, and most Internet surfers will land on Yahoo or shop at Amazon.com rather than less familiar Web sites.

"Brands are the global currency of business, in good economic times and bad," says Chuck Brymer, chief executive of Interbrand Group, a leading international branding consulting firm. Increasingly, corporate brands such as Microsoft are becoming one with product brands.

In the end, success in the market comes down to the strength of brand. Companies such as Ford, Coca-Cola, Disney, Saks Fifth Avenue and IBM that have built powerful corporate brands are more likely to win the wallets of consumers -- and charge a premium price at the same time.

On the cusp of the millennium, the rapid pace of big company mergers is forcing an end to many brands. But there is more going on than just survival of the corporate fittest. Consider these changes:

n Some brands, such as Plymouth in cars and Packard-Bell in personal computers, face retirement because they are perceived to have lost their market appeal.

n Westinghouse, a Fortune 500 company with deep roots, trashed its own brand name after buying CBS and re-emerging as a media giant.

n NationsBank, the former NCNB Corp., was a brand name chosen just seven years ago to help the North Carolina juggernaut pursue a nationwide banking franchise. But when NationsBank expanded enough to reach California, the bank chucked its young NationsBank brand for the matured name of its biggest acquisition: Bank of America.

Sometimes, the corporate zeal to change names in an attempt to stay fresh or hip isn't the best idea, says Jim Gregory, founder and chief executive of Corporate Branding LLC in Stamford, Conn., and author of Leveraging the Corporate Brand.

"There are good brand names being walked away from every day. There is tremendous value being lost," he said. Some brands, though defunct, still endure. Westinghouse -- whose name remains on appliances made by other companies -- still has more brand clout than most of its corporate peers, said Gregory, whose company tracks the reputations of 800 corporations and brands.

Megamergers among big-brand companies bring a fresh dilemma. Two years ago, Worldcom Inc., a relative unknown telecommunications company in Jackson, Miss., managed to buy MCI Communications -- one of the best known telecom brands in the country.

Now MCI Worldcom is buying Sprint Corp., a dazzling deal in itself but one that leaves the buyer awash in valuable brand names. Here's the kicker: While analysts expect MCI Worldcom to banish the Sprint name, brand experts say Sprint has a clearer, stronger brand image than MCI.

One unwieldy solution, adopted in a merger of some big accounting firms to create the 22-letter name of PricewaterhouseCoopers, seems unlikely. Telecommunications analysts don't expect to see a company named MCISprintWorldcom.

As more companies hunt for a new brand, they yearn to find one as smashingly successful as Lucent Technologies. The naming of Lucent, the $20-billion company formed from a 1996 AT&T spinoff, was the crowning achievement of Landor Associates, a San Francisco-based branding consultancy and design firm. Lucent, though young, is a brand that gets high marks for customer recognition and reputation.

That's why Bell Atlantic and GTE, whose merger is expected by April, picked Landor to help find a new brand name for their combined company. "What an excellent job Lucent did when it picked a new name," Bell Atlantic chief executive Ivan Seidenberg said recently.

Bell Atlantic's quest for an enduring brand is driven by geography. The company bought Nynex, the regional Bell company of the Northeast, but retired its name because its initials stood for New York New England. The Bell Atlantic brand still worked, though the company now stretched as far north as Maine.

The GTE deal, however, will extend Bell Atlantic's reach to California and new states in the Midwest. Bell Atlantic's new name will eliminate any regional references.

Brand development is not cheap. Just ask Walt Disney Co.

The giant entertainment company was ordered by a federal judge last week to abandon the logo it uses to promote its Go Network of Internet properties. The judge said Disney's logo, which features the word "Go" inside a green traffic light, too closely resembles a similar design used by GoTo.com, an Internet search engine. Disney says it could cost more than $40-million to comply with the injunction. (On Thursday, an appeals court suspended the injunction and let Disney use the logo while the company appeals the federal judge's ruling.)

The explosion of the Internet is creating intense competition by new players to establish brands and attract customers. So far, players such as Yahoo, Amazon.com, American Online and eBay have taken early leads in brand development by becoming recognizable names -- even among people who do not use the Internet.

The threat is that new brands could quickly surpass old-line brands that took decades to gain strong reputations.

Which brands have most changed America in the 20th century?

Brand Marketing magazine recently selected the 100 brands of the century. The oldest brand still closely tied to its origins is Pillsbury, which began as a flour processor in 1869. Among the newer brands of significance is the upstart Fox Network. Elvis Presley is the only person included as one of the 100 brands. Pan Am was the only defunct brand.

In some industries, brand battles make for some clear winners. Ford started building its corporate brand six years ago and has sailed by General Motors. "GM seems to be slipping with no clear vision where they are going," Corporate Branding's Gregory says.

GM's marketing slips are part of business legend. One classic example is the time GM shipped its Chevy Nova to Latin America in the late 1970s without doing its homework: No va means "it doesn't go" in Spanish.

Other corporate brandmakers should not brag. In the mid-1980s, executives at InterNorth of Omaha and Houston Natural Gas wanted a catchy name for their newly merged energy companies. Their first choice was the snappy sounding Enteron -- until callers pointed out the word is the medical term for the canal through which people excrete solid waste.

Three days later, the company name was changed to Enron.

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