ABRDN? You’ve got to be jkng
There is a God. Or should that be Gd.
Just as India’s Covid trauma was proving too painful to witness and our faith in good governance was being shaken by arguments over who paid for the wallpaper in the Downing Street flat, along comes one of those ridiculous corporate rebranding exercises. It’s weird how they do it. A business with a perfectly good name – one that is easily recognisable – employs an outside specialist agency, runs up a bill of millions and comes up with a complete trky.
This is Standard Life Aberdeen that from now on, wants to be known as Abrdn. Please.
It’s desperate, sad, pathetic, all those things. Not so, says Stephen Bird, who became Chief Executive in September. The name change to something totally unpronounceable represents “a clarity of focus”.
Steve – or should that be Stv – you’re talking crp. I can see it’s better suited digitally, which is another way of saying young people, who are the future and more tech-minded, don’t use vowels.
It’s true, they don’t always, but that does not mean you bastardise a name that is based on a place that can trace its title back to the 12th century and the Pictish word abar, meaning mouth of the river, in this instance the one that the Romans called Devana.
Granted, the 2017 merger with Standard Life threw up issues. Standard Life Aberdeen is a mouthful. But how do you get from that to Abrdn, or ABRDN as it will be written? Well, I guess STD ABRDN wasn’t acceptable on grounds of taste. So, the awkward STD was lanced and we’re left with ABRDN. Or A Burden as the City is saying already.
What is the point, though, of picking a name when you have to tell people how it should be said? Surely, that defeats the purpose.
Not if you’re Wolff Olins, the branding experts responsible. You simply persuade the client to not only pay for this stroke of brilliance but also for “implementation of a full stakeholder engagement plan to manage the transition.” In plain English that means telling people how to say it.
Please, I wish I was a Standard Life Aberdeen employee. I want to be invited to an Ibis on the ring-road and spend a day in a meeting room watching as the wallies from Wolff Olins take us through their cleverness. Before we reach the PowerPoint we will break into teams and go to the four corners of the room, and with flip chart, easel and felt tips provided, we will write down examples of other successful corporate rebadging.
Better still, we may be required to think of ones where all the vowels were removed. For a bit of softening up we could also play Scrabble minus a,e,i,o,u.
Why do they do it? Because boards of mostly middle-aged to verging on elderly folk are desperate to stay on trend, terrified of the world passing their company by, and believe by taking such a step they will be seen to be “dynamic”, “modern”, “progressive”.
That at least is what the smooth-talkers tell them when they come in, probably armed with a piece of research, showing how the existing moniker went down badly at focus groups with the under-35s (probably because they haven’t a clue about savings and pensions, let alone knowing anything about Aberdeen’s expertise). They can also show, as if by magic, how history is littered with cases of firms that switched and boosted their returns.
Possibly, those listening were not told about those that didn’t. The Post Office turning itself into Consignia, comes to mind. Then there was PwC Consulting opting for Monday (“fresh thinking and new beginnings”, not the first day back at work after a cracking weekend).
When Arthur Andersen broke in two, the consultancy arm became Accenture which was supposed to mean “accent on the future” (geddit). They too faced resistance, but then the old Anderson accountants hit the skids over Enron and the switch appeared timely – although anything except Andersen would do, so sht were they.
At Accenture they maintained that they’d considered 5,000 potential names before alighting on that one. This claim raised eyebrows and prompted men in the City – only men – to make rude vigorous gestures with their hands. The fact was that at that moment Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting were locked in litigation and it so happened that the initials AC matched the first two letters of the new Accenture.
Imagine, though, there really is a list of 5,000 names. Somehow, they still came up with Abrdn. This begs the question – while this represents “clarity of focus” what were the ones they rejected?
Apparently, they’d been looking since February. Which means they were scouring during lockdown. I can’t get out of my head all those endless Zoom calls, with the bloke top left making a suggestion and the woman bottom right saying “nah, next.” On, long into many nights they must have gone, before one of them said “Abrdn”, or didn’t say it because you can’t. Perhaps they wrote it on a piece of paper and held the note up to the camera, and so utterly exhausted were they that they nodded their approval.
Possibly, that’s the explanation, that while WFH one of them spotted a msg from a child and realised all they had to do was to scrap the vowels. But, Steve and your colleagues, my kids may message that way but they still speak and write in fully-formed English. You and your pals at Wolff Olins may not believe so, but they do use vowels. “Street” doesn’t become strt.
What hope have we got, if in their exams they spell the home of the North Sea oil industry, Abrdn? Come on.
Having joined with Standard Life, based in Edinburgh, there were problems with identity, I can see that. But what I don’t understand is the reasoning offered that in choosing the new brand, Aberdeen was rejected because as the name of a city, the company would not have been able to control the intellectual property rights. But Aberdeen was the name of the company that combined with Standard Life. Presumably, that Aberdeen was not so legally challenged or it was and we were never told.
When they dreamt up Accenture they tested the name in 60 languages to make sure it did not have an offensive meaning anywhere they did business and didn’t infringe any existing trademarks. That would not be a problem here. “See, even better”, say the corporate image wizards.
Regardless, the upshot is appalling (I won’t say ppllng, well I have, it’s a disease and I’m infected). From Dnbrgh, over the Frth to Dnd and on to Abrdn, it does not work.
Imagine if it catches on. There would be no “East Fife 4 Forfar 5”. St Ff 4 Frfr 5 is not the same. It’s fckng wfl. For once, there is no need for asterisks.