As I have been in product marketing in healthcare IT for several years, I was interested in this survey. At two companies I contributed to the renaming of product portfolios due to a "branding refresh." The initiative in both cases had to do with marketing's desire to rationalize a group of products that appeared to be disparate and confusing primarily because the products were purchased from multiple companies and had various (sometimes inexplicable) naming approaches. The primary issue that drove the desire to change product names was: How do we name our next new product? Do we start it with an X like the products we bought from company X, or do we stick with a generic name, or do we end the name in -Med like the products we bought from company Y?
Marketers have data that shows that there is not much brand equity in B2B product names (unlike B2C), but it still is hard to convince product managers and company founders to "refresh" the names of their babies given their emotional ties to the names. Brand equity and name recognition in B2B is mostly with the company name. You'll be interested in this: I did research on several products in HIMSS Analytics, where the product names are supplied by the users in the survey process and HIMSS aggregates the survey responses under the company and common category, keeping the various self-reported "product" names (hopefully I worded this accurately). I found the following data pattern in several instances of re-named products that were acquired from another company (often >5 years ago): 50% of those surveyed still use the original company name as the name for the product long after the product was sold and the name was changed, 25% still use the original product name, and 25% used new product name. I haven't spoken to HIMSS to see if this was a result of their survey process somehow, but it was an interesting scenario that played out over and over; we also heard our clients using old company and product names on a daily basis.
Last, in 15 years of B2B technology marketing in several industries, I've never heard of a situation where a company renamed a product to distance themselves from a past failure. Renaming a technology product is actually hard to do given all the places a product name exists in code, user interface, help/training documents, demos, support and marketing materials. Not that it doesn't happen, but that is a very rare situation. I also feel the wording of this survey unfairly suggested something "negative" in the minds of your readers and appears biased. But you have seen way more products in your career than me - can you or your readers suggest an HIT product that was renamed to distance itself from a failure? I'd be interested in hearing those case studies. I wouldn't count situations where the company rebuilt the product on a new platform with a new name, leaving the legacy product and name behind with it's dwindling yet still existing revenue base (I've seen plenty of these situations).
ockham - 9 years ago
companies changing their name...Like Leidos which is either a reinvented or spin off from SAIC...yes...makes we wonder what is being hidden or manipulated.
As I have been in product marketing in healthcare IT for several years, I was interested in this survey. At two companies I contributed to the renaming of product portfolios due to a "branding refresh." The initiative in both cases had to do with marketing's desire to rationalize a group of products that appeared to be disparate and confusing primarily because the products were purchased from multiple companies and had various (sometimes inexplicable) naming approaches. The primary issue that drove the desire to change product names was: How do we name our next new product? Do we start it with an X like the products we bought from company X, or do we stick with a generic name, or do we end the name in -Med like the products we bought from company Y?
Marketers have data that shows that there is not much brand equity in B2B product names (unlike B2C), but it still is hard to convince product managers and company founders to "refresh" the names of their babies given their emotional ties to the names. Brand equity and name recognition in B2B is mostly with the company name. You'll be interested in this: I did research on several products in HIMSS Analytics, where the product names are supplied by the users in the survey process and HIMSS aggregates the survey responses under the company and common category, keeping the various self-reported "product" names (hopefully I worded this accurately). I found the following data pattern in several instances of re-named products that were acquired from another company (often >5 years ago): 50% of those surveyed still use the original company name as the name for the product long after the product was sold and the name was changed, 25% still use the original product name, and 25% used new product name. I haven't spoken to HIMSS to see if this was a result of their survey process somehow, but it was an interesting scenario that played out over and over; we also heard our clients using old company and product names on a daily basis.
Last, in 15 years of B2B technology marketing in several industries, I've never heard of a situation where a company renamed a product to distance themselves from a past failure. Renaming a technology product is actually hard to do given all the places a product name exists in code, user interface, help/training documents, demos, support and marketing materials. Not that it doesn't happen, but that is a very rare situation. I also feel the wording of this survey unfairly suggested something "negative" in the minds of your readers and appears biased. But you have seen way more products in your career than me - can you or your readers suggest an HIT product that was renamed to distance itself from a failure? I'd be interested in hearing those case studies. I wouldn't count situations where the company rebuilt the product on a new platform with a new name, leaving the legacy product and name behind with it's dwindling yet still existing revenue base (I've seen plenty of these situations).
companies changing their name...Like Leidos which is either a reinvented or spin off from SAIC...yes...makes we wonder what is being hidden or manipulated.