W nd t tlk abt Abrdn
Yesterday Standard Life Aberdeen announced it was rebranding to Abrdn. The FT called me for comment, as they do from time to time. See below for the article.
It’s so easy to sling mud at anything new, so before I do - and I will - let me start by saying what makes sense.
Firstly, the business strategy. The new CEO, Stephen Bird, has made it clear that he wants to focus the business. Rationalising the portfolio of brands makes perfect sense in the context.
Secondly, given the above, this represents a great opportunity for Bird to signal the business was not just consolidating but changing. And as I said in my article, a bold brand change can be a helpful precursor to, and accelerant of, real change in a business.
Thirdly, anything new and different is always going to feel alien and uncomfortable at the outset. In fact, if it feels too comfortable it’s probably because it’s generic.
And finally, in a crowded trademark registry, with over 40m registrations on the WIPO database alone, not to mention the complexities of top level domains, creating something new that you can register and own is extremely difficult.
But…and here comes the mud….that name is a shocker.
Any brand that has to explain how it is pronounced is off to a bad start. The dropping of vowels feels faddish, evoking the lazy spelling of texting teenagers or TikTok stars. It tries too hard.
Was it really necessary? Were the legacy names such a liability that they couldn’t choose one? There’s a lot of brand equity - and business value - that’s been tossed out of the window here. There’s a perfectly passable visual identity that is being overlooked in all of this that could have carried much of the weight of change without the collateral damage that the name is creating.
However it’s not just the name. Beyond the brand architecture question - five brands becoming one - there was no explanation why they needed a new name. “Our new brand Abrdn builds on our heritage and is modern, dynamic and, most importantly, engaging for all of our client and customer channels,” said Bird. “It is a highly differentiated brand that will create unity across the business.” It worries me when I hear senior executives talking about ‘the brand’ like this. It’s a name and a logo at the moment, and the only engaging that is going on is of the wrong sort. ‘The brand’ is something that they will build over time and then, only then, will they have something that contributes value.
And that’s the core of the problem here. There’s no substance to compensate for the clumsy style. No idea behind the images and the words. No explanation about how this will result in concrete improvements for intermediaries or customers. No promise to intrigue or excite. There’s a forgettable video, with lots of circular objects, that talks in generic terms about togetherness and building a better world.
The more I look for redeeming features, the more I worry that there really is no story, no clear business strategy for how these businesses come together to be more valuable for their stakeholders. Financial services is dull, and is crying out for a big modern, technology-led player to lead the way. But you have to bring people with you, show them what it means, what their role is, why they should be excited, what you’re planning to actually do.
The next time we can expect to see progress in August. Meanwhile, it’s business as usual “alongside implementation of a full stakeholder engagement plan to manage the transition”. I pity the group brand team that have to sell this pup to the existing businesses. Because here is the real danger: that come August the business will try to move forward…but the legacy organisations won’t support it. And that’s hard. You need a culture that is pulling for the new vision of the business, not one that is ashamed by the name of the company they work for. You need employees who are proud of the company they represent, not who quietly participate in the jokes about missing letter Es with intermediaries, colleagues, customers and analysts. It needs to rally, to galvanise, to excite, not to embarrass. If they don’t get it right behind the scenes between now and August, it will be a slow, invisible death by apathy.