"Even if it's 1% of potential customers that are confused by the name and go away unhappy, losing those sales can really hurt you in this business," says Curcio.
So Curcio hired King-Casey, a branding company known for creating the Merrill Lynch (MER) bull logo and which helps develop marketing and branding initiatives for large chains like McDonald's (MCD) and Subway, among other types of businesses. Although King-Casey doesn't normally work with small companies, Howland Blackiston, one of the principals at the firm, decided to give the fledgling restaurant a shot—and a good deal, because he liked the food and the restaurant's overall concept.
King-Casey conducted branding research and exercises for about six months and completely rebranded Curcio's business, dubbing it "Pyrogrill." In October, Curcio will reopen with the new name, logo, signage, and collateral. "We're going to be pretty aggressive with the franchising part of the company, so it was paramount to make these changes first," says Curcio. "All the hard work we've done will save our franchisees from having to do the same things."
Like Curcio, most entrepreneurs will find themselves making tough decisions regarding naming and branding at some point in their business' life span. If you are considering a name change for your outfit, here are a few ideas you may want to keep in mind:
Be alert for any clues that a name change might really be necessary for your business' long-term success. For Pyrogrill, constantly being mistaken for a Greek restaurant was a giveaway. "If you find that you spend the first 10 minutes of a sales conversation explaining and apologizing for your name, there's a good indication that there may be an issue there," says Martyn Tipping, president of Tipping Sprung, a New York-based brand consultancy that specializes in naming.
Even if you're not hearing any negative feedback from your customers, you can still get out there and learn if your idea of your business matches that of the general public. "There's nothing wrong with standing in a mall with a well-written questionnaire and finding out what people think," says Blackiston. In fact, that's exactly what King-Casey did for Curcio. Through their research, the firm found that 50% of survey respondents thought "Pyro's Grill" was a steakhouse, 20% thought it was Mexican or Southwestern, and 20% thought it was Greek. The restaurant is none of those things.
If you determine your business needs a new name, recognize that a name change should really mean more than just a simple switch. Smart companies, says Tipping, see the process as an opportunity to change their tagline, logo, and more (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/20/06, "Creating a Slogan from Scratch"). "A name change is a big event in a company's life, so it's usually an opportunity to tell a story and generally establish a new visual identity," he says. "Otherwise, it's a missed opportunity," (See BusinessWeek.com, 4/04/06, "Picture Your Business with a Logo").
You'll have to decide whether you want a descriptive name (like The Container Store or Bob's Furniture Outlet on 14th Street) or a unique and original name (like Verizon (VZ) or Vonage (VG)). If you go with a straightforward, descriptive name, you won't have to spend a lot of money explaining what you do. But it may be difficult to trademark and protect, which invites imitators, and could be problematic if you change direction or focus.
If you create a Verizon-like name, "you have a very protectable piece of intellectual property that you can own, that builds a protective barrier around you. It also makes it much easier to scale, introduce new products and services under a name like that," says Tipping. The downside is that you'll have to spend more time and money upfront explaining who you are and what you do.
But finding a great new name can be daunting, because it's often neither easy nor cheap. Even if you come up with the perfect name, there's about a 90% chance it's already taken, says Tipping. And that goes for URLs, as well. When you do find an unregistered name, you can register it without a trademark for the cost of incorporating—cheaply. But to conduct all the legal searches and trademark the name will cost about $10,000 to do it yourself, says Tipping.
The process of registering and trademarking a name itself also takes a lot of time. When Lois Shore, senior vice-president of sales, marketing, and PR for Ensemble Travel Group, formerly Greater Independent Association of National Travel Services, started the process of changing her company's name in May, 2003, she had no idea that it would take until late 2006 to finish the paperwork. Ensemble, which is an association of travel agents mostly in the U.S. and Canada, had to be registered in those countries as well as in Britain, which accounts for some of the delay.
"It's a tremendous effort, but if you really want to be buttoned up, multiply the amount of time you think you'll spend by the number of countries you need to license your name in," says Shore.
Despite the time and effort it's taken Shore to rename her company, she says it's worth it for the quality and longevity of the brand she's established. "We had to establish a brand that we could own and protect and take into the future forever," says Shore.
To see a before-and-after slide show with some of branding firm King-Casey's renaming projects, click here.
