It's always something...

This is what happens when well intentioned people dip their toes into the marketing pond.

Gilda's Club in Madison, Wisconsin along with several other regional chapters are changing their name to Cancer Support Community because, according to their executive director,

One of the realizations we had this year is that our college students were born after Gilda Radner passed. As we are seeing younger and younger adults who are dealing with a cancer diagnosis, we want to make sure that what we are is clear to them and that there’s not a lot of confusion that would cause people not to come in our doors.

This is a stupid reason to change your organization's name, especially to something generic and purely functional like Cancer Support Community.

There's nothing unique about the new name, nothing memorable, nothing ownable.

Not to mention they're tossing aside the reason they exist in the first place.

A few years after Gilda Radner died of ovarian cancer in 1989, her husband Gene Wilder and Joanna Bull, Ms. Radner's therapist, helped to found the first Gilda's Club in New York City, as a place where women, men and children living with cancer could build a social support network to supplement their medical care. It's a great and moving story.

Throwing out this story because it's been 25 years since Ms. Radner passed away is ridiculous.

Ford didn't change its name after its founder passed away and the brand is still relevant.

I'm fine if you want to add Cancer Support Community as a modifier to the name the name Gilda's Club. A lot of brands do that.

The directors of the club would do better to make sure people know Gilda's story and use it to attract people to their red door. It's a huge asset to the brand and one they're tossing aside because they don't care enough to make it meaningful.

And that is shameful.

Thanks to my friend Yi Shun Lai for the tip on this one. You can read her thoughts on life, writing and other subjects on her blog, The Good Dirt.

The best Black Friday sale ever

I'm thankful for many things in my life, but today one thing I'm most thankful for is that I didn't have to work on this assignment.


Click on the image to enjoy the site in it's full interactive glory.

Enjoy your turkey.

Name for tomorrow

The easy thing to do when naming a new product or service is to select a descriptive name based on a key functional feature or attribute. Generally, however, it's not the right thing to do.

Why?

Just ask the folks at the Big Ten Conference.

With yesterday's announcement they will soon have 14 teams. So now it appears that these fine institutions of higher learning – including my alma mater – don't understand basic arithmetic.

Naming your brand after a functional attribute can inhibit your growth by boxing you in when you change your products or attitudes change around them (Kentucky FRIED Chicken anyone?) At the very least it will cost you a lot of money when you have to change your name and all your identity elements down the road.

The best names are evergreen. They are built upon larger things like vision, values, or elements of the brand's heritage that will not change, like Ford, Visa and Nike. Or choose a name that has no inherent meaning or no relationship to the product, then make it meaningful over time through their association with the products and your marketing, like Lexus, Apple and Google.

Between trying to come up with a name that's both trademarkable and dotcommable, the process is harder than ever. Don't make it harder on yourself by having to do it again in a few years when your product inevitably changes.