Rebranding « Merriam Associates, Inc. Brand Strategies

Merriam Associates specializes in branding that gets results. Everything we do systematically generates leads, closes sales, boosts profits, and builds a solid reputation for your company and your products or services. Our background combines the rigor of global Fortune 500 companies with the tenacity of successful entrepreneurs.

Congratulations to Geomentum

Merriam Associate’s client Geomentum is in the news with a new president, Lisa Bradner. Read about the new appointment here.

Merriam Associates created the Geomentum name a year ago when Interpublic consolidated several large local media-buying and marketing services units including newspaper buying agency NSA Media, Wahlstrom, a specialist in Yellow Pages and local search, [...]

Breaking the Motorola Brand

Splitting up Motorola

Splitting Motorola into two companies should have been a great branding opportunity—a chance to create two distinctive, focused, world leading brand names. Unfortunately, the brains behind the Motorola branding missed the opportunity. Trying to spread the Motorola brand equity across two companies destroys the brand for both.

Breaking up the company makes [...]

Obama and the U.S. Pentagon in the Naming Business: Renaming Operation Iraqi Freedom

When we think of brand names, we most often think of companies and products—but the U.S. military is also in the business of branding. The Pentagon has just announced “Operation Iraqi Freedom” is being renamed “Operation New Dawn”. The Obama administration states the new name will take effect starting September 1st to coincide with the [...]

Renaming Proxios: CEO Talks About the Process

Fast growing, innovative companies can sometimes outgrow their brands.

“Our name became constraining,” said Frank Butler, CEO of Proxios, a fast-growing company using cloud computing technology to create affordable and reliable alternatives to traditional in-house information technology and phone systems. “Our old name Super-Server did not have broad appeal and it was dated.”

Merriam Associates gave this [...]

Brand Architecture: Strategic Considerations

What is the best structure for your brand portfolio? The answer depends on a number of strategic considerations:

Audience Diversity
What are the target segments for your brand? Is the brand focused on just one audience or must it appeal to many?

Brand Elasticity
How far can each of the brands stretch to cover different [...]

Approaches to Brand Architecture

Companies manage their brand portfolios through a number of brand architecture structures, driven by company culture, markets and customers, and goals.

Single Unitary Brand Architecture
One brand creates a single powerful image, sometimes with a descriptor.

Marketing is more efficient. With one brand front and center, cross selling and cooperation are easier. The brand can lose [...]

Selected Naming Project Portfolio

Merriam Associates names almost a hundred companies and products a year. We work across categories, from consumer to B2B, from billion dollar companies to start-ups you haven’t heard of (yet). Our innovative approach creates strategically valuable names with impact.

Rebranding Proxios

Outgrowing the Brand
Proxios had its beginnings as a small technology infrastructure outsourcing company called SuperServer. The company has grown beyond its Richmond, VA roots to have a national reach and had made significant investments in cutting-edge technology. They needed a brand that would convey the true stature of the company and give it a [...]

Visual Systems Strengthen Brand and Cut Costs

Taking a systematic approach to your visuals, whether for your web site, brochures, business cards, even videos, will dramatically strengthen the power of your brand while cutting your production costs.

Macy's Blunders with Marshall Fields Brand Name Change

Macy’s thought it could cut costs and achieve buying efficiencies if it created one single national department store chain. That thinking led to a major brand blunder in Chicago. Marshall Fields has such a devoted brand following that even two years later, protests remain wide-spread and vigorous.