Mark Ritson: VodafoneThree brand name is a clunky compromise… but it might just work

Step one: ask who the founders are.

Step two: cobble their names together, usually in alphabetical order. Job done!

And thus, we arrived at branding classics like Bozell Jacobs Kenyon & Eckhardt and the unforgettable grandeur of Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe – to name just two of the more memorable offenders.

Of course, as time trudges on, people tire of these concatenated names, abbreviating them into arbitrary acronyms such as:

BBDO.

BBH.

BMP.

And BMB.

Eventually, commercial gravity ensures mergers require a further, more ridiculous iteration of this naming nonsense.

And that’s how we reach the branding zenith of BMP DDB Needham, MGOMD and, who could forget, VMLY&R (now VML again).

Inside agencyland, this insanity passes unchallenged.

Nearly everyone’s guilty of at least one ‘supergroup’ naming crime, so no one speaks out – so I will. Should you be seeking advice on differentiation, branding and advertising from companies that have singularly avoided all three topics for the entire operation of their own businesses?

And that brings us to...

VodafoneThree – a better branding approach?

Initially, I had the same reaction to merged UK mobile carrier VodafoneThree when it launched a “joint campaign” last week. Built from a 51% stake from Vodafone and 49% from Three owners CK Hutchison, the merger immediately creates the biggest mobile operator in the UK. Anti-trust approval took two years, but with the deal done and the brand now live, I must say, I was expecting something a bit bigger and bolder.

But unusually, and dare I say, deliciously, the two brands aren’t singing from the same hymn sheet just yet.

Three lead with an ad by Wonderhood Studios extolling how its customers now benefit from Vodafone’s network. Vodafone followed via Leo UK, fronted by Roman Kemp and touting a similar message with its trademark branding assets.

Neither ad will set the world aflame. What’s compelling, however, is how the newly merged brands still maintain separate communications, a refreshingly distinct approach from the usual merger playbook.

Traditionally, the winner among merging brands is chosen by strategic position, market size or good old-fashioned boardroom fuckery. Whatever the method, the goal is usually to choose between merged brands and select a single winner. Recall AT&T’s acquisition of Cingular 20 years ago. Despite spending billions for the Cingular brand name as part of the intangible asset part of the deal, AT&T promptly ditched it and shifted all customers to AT&T Mobile.

Why pay a king’s ransom for a brand name only to bury it?

Well, sometimes the cost of maintaining dual brands can be even more fatal and that’s before accounting for non-financial headaches like clashing corporate cultures, internal turf wars, cannibalization, confusion and lost economies of scale.

As a result, the prevailing wisdom among big brands has been consolidation and focus. In precisely the opposite message to VodafoneThree’s new claims, one brand is usually better than two. Especially when battling already-consolidated competitors that focus all their resources and attention on the one brand, while you stumble around juggling many and often dropping them all. You have to work out which chickens to eat, and which ones to feed, as my Cumbrian grandfather once advised me to my total and utter incomprehension.

At first glance, the decision to simply append the two names looks suspiciously like a stalemate. But no brand strategy is ever one-size-fits-all. Every brand strategy must be bespoke because every brand presents its own peculiarities. On closer inspection, the VodafoneThree amalgam is strategically sound.

The strongest rationale for dual naming is the sheer number of consumers involved. Vodafone serves around 18 million, Three roughly 10 million. These vast, largely exclusive customer bases make a persuasive argument for maintaining both brands, at least initially. Of course, it would be simpler to consolidate under one name and enjoy the benefits of singular focus. But the risk of a fuck up is so much greater with these massive, mature customer bases that the conjoined approach must have appealed.

Then there is the nature of the category itself. In some categories, size and multiplicity are weaknesses; try launching “two is better than one” if you’re merging banks or automotive firms. However, for mobile networks, scale and breadth are tangible advantages. People want a bigger network and double the service. More is more. When a category is accretive like this, perhaps the brand naming can follow suit.

This name combination also soothes internal post-merger tensions. Two teams accustomed to competing must now collaborate, while occasionally stepping on each other’s toes and applying for each other’s jobs. Never underestimate the corporate melodrama behind mergers. I recall one “fun” paintball afternoon for a freshly merged team that rapidly devolved into a business re-enactment of Full Metal Jacket. Retaining both names will ease transition pains.

And while it’s a banal point – the fact that one of the names involved in the new company is a number also helps justify the move. British consumers bristle at double-barreled names. There are many reasons not to like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, for example, but the hyphen is right up there. However, consumers are likely to be more receptive to a name conjoined not with another word but with a number. From Channel 4 to Paddington 2, there is a morphological and phonetic case to be made for Vodafone3 that – with the exception of Droga5 – does not apply to our earlier agency examples.

Of course, the biggest argument for dual branding, brace yourselves, Three loyalists, is that once the ‘best of both worlds’ narrative lands and the new brand is firmly positioned, the Three name can be quietly taken round the back of the barn and put out of its misery. And voila, we are back to Vodafone.

In brand architecture, we call this ’phasing,’ and it’s a clever way to retire a strong, legacy brand. Begin with co-branding (“Midland Bank HSBC”), foster comfort among staff and customers, then seamlessly transition to the optimal final position.

There are three steps in most brand architecture jobs: know your current architecture, identify the ideal future state, and, crucially, plan the transition from A to B meticulously. Phasing is often the answer to this transitional challenge, especially when brutal brand culling is deemed too risky or expensive.

Robust brand tracking is vital in phasing: only once research confirms that Three’s customers feel safe in Vodafone’s arms does the transition proceed. Tom Ford put it best: “The right thing at the wrong time is still the wrong thing.”

Market research enables an acquiring brand to wait until the stars are aligned before making the move. Or perhaps never making it, if the data does not support the switch.

This gradual phase-out also makes sense given the outdated origins of the Three brand. It was named after the 3G networks introduced at the turn of the last century. This technology is now being phased out to free up capacity for 4G and 5G services and the fact that these networks are a big part of the newly merged company’s plans surely sounds like the death knell for Three. Maintaining the conjoined name in the era of 5G makes no sense. Like Mary Fuchs marrying the undertaker Keith Graves and insisting they share a double-barrelled name, two isn’t always better than one over the long term.

There is another path, of course. The UK’s newest mobile behemoth could take a page from adland and adopt its expert agency approach to brand naming. The new company’s leadership surnames are Taylor Purkis Barlow.

It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

Mark Fuchs-Ritson is a former marketing professor, brand consultant, and award-winning columnist. He is also the founder of the MiniMBA in Brand Management, which has just kicked off (but still has some spaces), and has trained thousands of brand managers on how to do it better.

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