It’s all true, admits Jonathan Spooner, agencies and their stupid names are like the old saying about cobblers’ children and their ill-fitting shoes. But not for much longer, at this agency at any rate.
OK, OK, it’s true, you read it here first: the whole dreadful business of renaming the agency is on the agenda again. And yes, you’re right, it is very long overdue. When CCHM and Ping Communications merged, we did say that the hybrid name, cchm:ping, was a short-term solution designed to provide clarity and avoid confusion for a brief period after the merger. And although “short term” is an expression without any exact meaning, I think most people would say that it means less than two years and 11 months, which is the length of time that it has now lasted.
There are two reasons why agencies find it so hard to deal with the naming thing.
The first is that very often, we simply can’t decide what we ought to be called. Actually, it’s even worse than that: we can’t decide what kind of name it should be. The first, most obvious and longest-established option is the initials thing, and in this area there’s still a chance to grab the record by coming up with a string of nine or ideally ten: I can remember eight (SJIP BBDO), and seven is reasonably commonplace (BMP DDB Needham, Euro RSCG Wnek Gosper), but I don’t think anyone has managed nine and I’m sure noone’s got into double figures.
(Perhaps surprisingly, cchm:ping itself actually stands for six people’s names – as well as the fairly obvious c, c, h and m, the “ping” bit stands for the names of the agency’s two founders, Rupert Pybus and Sean Ingram.)
Then fairly recently there has been a brief trend for cryptic phrases – Dig For Fire, Stretch The Horizon and the absurd Snog The Agency, which is the kind of name marketing directors must dread having to tell their chairmen about. (“Tell me, Tarquin. Agency review. Picked a winner yet?” “Well, yes, actually, Chairman.” “Out with it, Tarquin, who’s won?” “Well, Chairman, they call themselves Ogerayency.” “Sorry, didn’t catch that.” “Ogerayency.” “Speak up, man, can’t hear you.” “Actually, Chairman, at the last minute we went with McCanns.” “Well done, Tarquin, excellent choice.”)
More recently still there has been a longer and stronger fashion for short, iconic and opaque one-word names – Mother, Glue, Farm and Soul. And then there has always been a sprinkling of odd names out – names that usually do have a rationale, but one that’s too obscure or complicated or boring to be worth bothering about, like Isobel, Elvis, Ipsh and Karmarama.
Which of these options is right for us? Initials? Too boring. Cryptic phrase? Too daft. One-word icon? Too pretentious. Odd name out? Too…well, odd.
But it doesn’t really matter. Because the second reason that we find it so hard to deal with the naming thing is that quite frankly, we’re all far too busy on client work to find time for it. The famous cliché about the cobbler’s children invariably applies. And of course there’s a catch-22: on the rare occasions when it doesn’t – when we are sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting for a client to brief us on something – we’re far too worried about the sudden collapse in our income to kick off an expensive rebranding process.
So all in all, we’re far too busy, or much too quiet, or just altogether too confused about our options, to put a renaming project in hand. But nevertheless, despite all this, we’re doing it. I’m even prepared to commit to a renaming date: January sounds about right. The only remaining question is which January: 2008? 2009? 2010?
Comment on this article
By submitting your comments, you are expressing your consent to our Terms & Conditions.