Is your reputation tied up in your company name?

There are numerous high-profile examples of companies who rebranded in an attempt to cover up a bad incident or reputation (here and here).

Call me overly simplistic, but I’ve always believed that owning up to mistakes was better than hoping no-one noticed – and while the cases in the articles above are complex, I still think that applies here.

If the aim of a name change or rebrand is simply to help people forget the past, without making any changes to avoid the errors of the past, to me that’s not clever marketing… it’s just manipulation.

If you can’t own your previous brand, as in “We used to be This Inc. but now we’re That Inc.“, it makes me wonder why, and what your covering up.

Quick example

Aussie company Upparel fully owns their previous company name Manrags, and talk about it often on their podcast. There was no incident or reputation hit, but they believed that producing products overseas (socks and underwear) was a wasteful contribution to an overstocked planet, so instead shifted into collecting and recycling textiles to divert them away from landfill, and now create products in-house from those recycled garments under a fully circular model. Their shift from product store to circular organisation culminated in their name change.

In other words, the name wasn’t a superficial attempt to cover up something they weren’t proud of – their renewed values and goals lead them to the new name. They fundamentally changed something about their business, rather than just slapping a new label on it.

Where to from here?

If you’re considering a rebrand because of bad PR or your reputation has been harmed in some way, I’d hit pause on that for a minute – have you addressed the actual problem? Can you own it and flip into a positive? Is there a cultural change that needs to happen?

Admit mistakes and take real measures to fix them, which gives loyalty a chance to go up. Then your rebrand (if it still happens) can be guided by your organisation’s learnings and rebirth, rather than being a cover-up.