Investment firm abrdn announced today that the firm has finally decided to bring an end to the name change nonsense I posted on here, four years ago, when it changed its name from Standard Life Aberdeen. “My bet is that the name will be changed within three years,” I wrote back then. “If it is still in use in April 2024, I will offer a free brand strategy coaching to the abdrn CEO at the time, over dinner in a restaurant of his or her choice!” Given I was one year out, the offer stands 🤓.
The firm will now be called aberdeen group. “This is a pragmatic decision marking a new phase for the organisation,” commented chief executive Jason Windsor (1). The company could have saved a load of money and hassle if there was a bit more pragmatism when the name change was made in 2021.
In this post, I re-visit and update the key points from the original post.
Re-cap of the 2021 name change nonsense
The CEO back in 2021, Stephen Bird, was right when he said that efficiency would come from replacing five different brand names with a single name (2). Standard Life Aberdeen was created by the merger of Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management in 2017. The firm had six brands and websites, down to five after the recent sale of the Standard Life brand. Full marks for portfolio strategy thinking, a topic we covered in a previous post here.
The issue is the name and visual identity Stephen and the senior team chose, created by Wolf Ollins.
1. Don’t mistake a logo for a brand
The first problem with the abrdn launch was this being another example of a company mistakenly presenting a logo change as a new “brand”.
“I hate the CEO saying we’ve introduced a differentiated brand for a start; no you haven’t, you’ve adopted a potentially stand out name,” rightly ranted Stephen Cheliotis on Linked In. “This alone, neatly surmises the issue of the C-suite not getting the basics when its comes to brands.”
You can stream for free here a module on brand-led business our from Mastering Brand Growth program that explores this problem in more detail.
2. Ensure your name is pronounceable
The first and most important criteria for a successful brand name change is that the new name is easy to remember and pronounce. This is critical to help create the distinctive memory structure needed to recall a brand at the moment of truth when customers decide what to buy.
The biggest and glaringly obvious issue with the name abrdn was that it was bloody impossible to pronounce. I assumed it was “abreden” when I first saw it.
“Investors need simple fund names that are recognisable amongst the thousands of investments out there,” rightly pointed out Laith Khalaf, financial analyst at AJ Bell (2). “Having a brand name you can actually say is a big help.”
3. Avoid wasting time and money explaining your name
Laith Khalaf also pointed out that the need to explain how to pronounce the name change will “not be lost on financial advisers up and down the country” (2).
A red flag back in 2021 was a press release that included an explanation on how to say the name. “The new Abrdn name (pronounced ‘Aberdeen’)” (3). Indeed, the company went on to waste a load of money taking out a multi-page press advert (below) explaining the name and how to pronounce it, as I posted on here.
Imagine being a financial adviser deciding which funds you should recommend to a client. Even if abrdn has some good funds, would you want to waste valuable time trying to explain the name? The name is doing the exact opposite of what a brand is supposed to do: help people choose easily and confidently.
4. Don’t try too hard to be modern
Warning signs started flashing when I read that the Standard Life Aberdeen “re-branding” had “the aim of creating a modern, agile, digitally-enabled brand.” (4)
The result was, to my eyes, a logo that looked like it was trying a little too hard to be up to date… like “a dad dancing at the disco” is how I describe this! All the elements of a trendy brand were there. Lower case, sans serif typeface: tick. Pixelated dots to show we’re digital: tick. Name with vowels missing like pop stars The Weeknd and Juice WRLD: tick.
But in financial services, a key need is to communicate reliable performance. Here, Standard Life Aberdeen actually had a decent product ‘sausage’ to build on: 71% of the company’s funds beat their 1 year benchmark, according to Stephen Bird (5). And yet reliability and performance didn’t come across strongly in the new logo.
5. Balance freshness and consistency
There is a need for freshness when updating a brand’s visual identity. But there is also a need for consistency, to build on the established memory structure.
However, in the case of abrdn, there was no attempt to build on any of the elements of the previous visual identity. Rather than refreshing the visual identity, the team went for a radical re-design.
In conclusion, abdrn was an example of name change nonsense that gets branding a bad reputation. It also shows how much time, effort and money can be saved with a healthy dose of pragmatism that the current CEO is finally bringing to bear.
To learn more about how to use brand as a catalyst for growth across the whole business, you can join our next Mastering Brand Growth program here.
SOURCES
(2) https://www.cityam.com/standard-life-aberdeen-to-change-name-to-abrdn
(3) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56888611
(4) https://www.standardlifeaberdeen.com/en/sla-to-become-abrdn
