While most are also stuck with a lot of old-fashioned twisted names and ancient iconography, there is growing awareness to obtain better and sharper name brand presence.
For that, there are some very serious marketing and brand-positioning challenges for bankers and proper understanding of such demands will decide the winners and losers in this fierce race.
Apart from the financial performances and business models when it comes to brand identity image, some will end up with the superstar iconic image and some will struggle very hard to catch the spotlight. So, how do they play this game? Let’s explore.
Only yesterday, the image of a bank, almost all over the world, was of a Roman arch, huge columns, and staff working behind windows with bars. Designed as monoliths, these cornerstone-block buildings displayed mainly their hard assets.
Overly dramatic, long and monopolistic brand names were engraved on the buildings to provide the assurance to the overly cautious elite. Perhaps, the society needed such consolations from a handful of such pretentious brand identities. Not any longer.
Today, the banks and financial institutions are in your pockets, humming palm-pilots, buzzing laptops all working quietly and completing complex transactions round the clock. While feeding pigeons in a park, you can do your banking.
Today, banking is highly mobile, fully transactional and all ready to go. Now, the interiors and exteriors both look like ultra-modern open offices and sometimes-deluxe cafeterias.
Furthermore, these days in Asia, just by adding a PLUS, PRIME or ONE to any existing business name is considered a stroke of genius. The insertion of a letter like eBank or the letter “I” as in iBank both are equally very dangerous.
The West is littered with these short-lived image and identity failures. Just enter any such names in quotes on Google and see the results, if the name is already competing with hundreds or thousand of others, it will never climb to the top in the customer’s mind.
Unfortunately, it costs ten times more to push these accidental names in branding cost and more than often these names do end up being changed or challenged in the trademark courts.
Recognize the danger of coping trendy name ideas, as this is the number one problem in corporate image and product name identities around the developing nations today.
As the tidal wave of this net-savvy culture becomes a global phenomenon and overtakes the populace of Pakistan, the marketers of these financial services are also faced with critical issues of cyber-branding and domain name organization. This not to be taken lightly, a website and e-mail accounts considered by most corporations as a powerful e-commerce strategy is no longer valid.
Now banking demands a sophisticated handle on cyber-presence and optimization of the web, a name identity, which can be matched with an identical dotcom. The optimization of cyber-presence is a most cost effective method and once done properly can offer extra-ordinary marketing reach. This whole area is getting extremely professional and requires solid e-commerce experiences.
The floodgates of new campaigns are also open and while there is a sharp rise in brand name activities, there is also a thick forest of strange and weird names out there while hundreds of new online and offline identities are clashing with each other, causing massive confusion among names of products and services of various financial institutions.
To gain the customer’s attention in an increasingly crowded market in a country and the surrounding regions, a great deal of money is being applied in the wrong directions.
Playing in new economy: Today, it’s all about business name identity and their high visibility on global e-commerce, instant accessibility on the net, quick search-ability on the web, distinct memorability of names by an overly strained populace, easy typability by tired fingers, and pleasant vocalization of such names and brand experiences by the customers all over the country and the region. It is now all in the name.
This new name-economy is now the new driver of e-commerce and is the only boost to global cyber-branding and a powerful tool to dominate a market or a region. At this very second, business names are skating at bullet speed on this flat new earth, without borders, passports or time zones. No delays, no barriers, no major costs, just access.
The name identity of a business will be the only measure on how a name works in a micro-multi-national-formation in a maze of countries and cultures. Economic power will be defined by the cyber-brand power and their accessibilities in number of countries. Big visuals replaced by small URLs. Under the new rules, a name works like a KEY, being the only thing that can unlock the doors to your corporate-kingdom.
The old-fashioned gigantic logos, splashing colours and stripes have nothing to do with this access. This is all about the structure of a name and its impact. Not about its type fonts, logos, and shapes. Just as the sixties were for burning flags and bras, perhaps now is the time to burn most of the old marketing and advertising books.
Good names have a direct impact on corporate persona and positively affect customers, shareholders, media and influence public opinions at large. It’s time to explore the power of names, new laws of marketing and learn how to play on this sophisticated name game on this, one single flat earth.
Universal message: Businesses in Pakistan use country specific dot.pk. There is nothing wrong if the business is also very confined to PK. The other reason, dotcom names are very difficult to get and require special expertise, but once you have them you can freely use them any where without being tied down to PK.
For that reason dotcom is the gold standard. However once you have a dotcom name, you can also have dot.pk and direct both names to the same website. This way one can play a regional or international game without being specifically tied down to a single country.
But, a dotcom becomes useless if doesn’t match with your corporate name, in this case all your promotion is duplicated and customers are ever so confused. Sony is sony.com and not sonysounds.com
Executives all over the world are faced with new challenges, because E-commerce demands visibility; powerful URLs and DotComs. For those who miss out on dotcom and settle on Dotnets, dotinfos, dotbizes are all easily forgotten and marketing suffers.
Today, naming is no longer a simple creative exercise, rather a serious strategic discipline where the rules of naming and the laws of corporate nomenclatures must be applied.
There are also language considerations, trademark laws and rules of global domain management laws, plus connotations and marketing understanding to fit the right profile of the corporation with the right potential customers.
There is a big difference between a massive advertising based branding exercise and a highly specialized name branding expertise. It is the easiest and the most cost effective process provided the proper laws are followed under professional expertise.
The writer is the founder of ABC Namebank International, a consulting firm