Practical Net branding for banks (page 1 of 2)

Only yesterday, the image of a bank was of a Roman arch, huge columns, and people working behind bars.

Today, the banks and financial institutions are in your pockets, humming in palm-pilots, PDAs, laptops, quietly completing complex transactions, 24/7. Banks which all over the world discovered globalization and e-commerce way before these words came into our daily lingo, are not only caught in a highly competitive marketplace but also are stuck with a lot of old-fashioned names and ancient iconography.

As the tidal wave of this net-savvy culture becomes a global phenomena, the marketers of these financial services are faced with critical issues of branding and naming. In the past, monolithically designed corner bank buildings displayed their hard assets.

Overly dramatic, long and monopolistic names engraved on the buildings provided the assurance to the early settlers. E.g., The First Chartered Bank of the First Dominion, or The Amalgamated of the De-Amalgamated Union Bank of Western Commerce, etc...

Perhaps the society needed such consolations from a handful of such name identities. Today, while feeding pigeons in the Central Park you do your banking online with INGs or the MBANXs alike. Now, there is a thick forest of strange names out there, and thousands of online identities are clashing with each other, causing confusion among names and services.

Today, it's all about business names and their high visibility on global e-commerce, instant accessibility on the net, quick search-ability on the web, distinct memorability of names by overly strained populace, easy typability by tired fingers, and pleasant vocalization of such
names and brand experiences by the customers all over the world.

This new name-economy is now the new driver of commerce and it is the only boost to the global cyber-branding. At this second, business names are skating at bullet speed on this flat new earth, without borders, passports or time zones.

No delays, no barriers, no major costs, just access. The name identity of a business will be the only measure on how a name works in a
micro-multi-national-formation in a maze of countries and cultures. Under the new rules, a name works like a KEY, being the only thing that can unlock the doors to this net-kingdom.

The competitive fog is so thick, that without this key, a name identity is simply doomed. The old-fashioned gigantic logos, splashing colors and stripes have nothing to do with this access. This is all about the structure of name and its impact and not about its type fonts or shape of logos.

As sixties were for burning flags, perhaps now is the time to burn most of the old marketing and branding books. Good names have direct impact on corporate persona and positively influence customers, shareholders, media and public opinion at large. It's time to explore the power of names, new laws of marketing and how to play on this new one flat earth.

It is a false rumor that all good names are taken. Corporations believed that all the star quality names were taken, and had no choice but to accept a silly, weird name.

Nonsense. The same big ad-agencies, which delivered world-class logos and commercials somehow seriously, failed in naming. A false myth was created to cover the lack of skills, and serious naming was farmed out to skateboarding freelancers for a "buck-a-name" service. $500 got you 500 names.

Where else would names like "Oinga or Boinga" come from? What ever happened to strange names like PurpleFrog or PinkRhino?

Banking executives all over the world are faced with new challenges, because E-commerce visibility demands powerful URLs and DotComs.