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In the 1990s, a small company named Cadabra met a lawyer's complaint about its name: "Reading this name feels like reading Corpse. At that time, the founder of this company had WeChat business. From the marketing perspective of China, he took a new company name with the letter A..
This is the later Amazon.
Recently, two companies engaged in Internet business have also put a lot of brains into their names.
On September 1 day, Didi restored the brand name "Kuai", which was later robbed of marriage by an early rival, and named its own taxi business, namely "Kuai Xin Taxi". This practice actually restored the original taste of "fast". In 20 12, the fast taxi was born, which was tailored for the taxi business.
Before the "fast" revival, in the second half of this year, Didi named the "one-price preferential taxi" business as Flower Pig and the carpooling business as Cai. Coupled with the green orange bicycle and gift orange car launched on 20 18, Didi's "vegetable basket" varieties are increasingly rich.
On the other hand, on September 1 1, Meituan Review announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that the company name was to be simplified to Meituan, and the original "Review" was hidden.
In addition, in 20 19, mobike was renamed Meituan Bicycle, and Hazelnut B&B was renamed Meituan B&B. Meituan continued to "slim down" the brand, and all new businesses launched subsequently were basically based on the extension of Meituan's main brand.
In June last year, Meituan announced that the main color of the brand was unified to yellow, not only the online App was visually changed to yellow, but also the offline bicycles, charging treasures, payment codes, POS machines, payment boxes and merchant door stickers were changed to yellow. They have all been integrated into "Mei Tuan Huang".
Using an inappropriate metaphor, Meituan seems to take the unified single brand route of "cars on the same track, books with the same text", while Didi began the "enfeoffment system" of multi-brand strategy. These two strategic designs were debated endlessly in Qin and Han dynasties, but now they are extended to the commercial world, and they still have their own advantages.
Then the question is, why does Meituan want to unify N brands into one now, while Didi disperses one brand into multiple brands?
Throughout history, the US Mission did not think of "great unification" from the beginning. In addition to the "adopted" mobike and the "flash marriage" commented by the public, Meituan will adopt some new names when launching new business in its early years.
For example, 20 17, Meituan Pictures hatched and later renamed Cat's Eye; When B&B business 20 17 was launched, it was named Hazelnut B&B; When the layout of 20 18 was fresh, it was also newly named "Little Elephant Fresh".
In the past, Didi clearly called out "one-stop travel service", from Didi Express to Didi Carpooling to Didi Shuttle, all businesses were closely integrated with Didi's main brand.
In addition, the minibus has re-experienced the products of the next two companies, and so far it gives people the feeling that nothing has changed except the name.
After the prefix "Meituan" is replaced uniformly, in addition to * * * enjoying bicycles, Meituan take-out, Meituan grocery shopping, Meituan optimization and public comment can still be used separately under the App (or can be used uniformly in Meituan App). In fact, there are still differences under the "great unity".
Didi's new names are Flower Pig, Green Vegetable, Gift Orange Car, etc. In addition to Flower Pig becoming an App independently, other functions still need to open the Didi Travel App selection. Whether to carpool or carpool is not necessarily related to the name of the real minibus.
The minibus learned from an insider close to the US Mission that the "renaming" only involved the company name. The main influence is the stock name, with the purpose of transmitting "unified" cognition to the capital market. There is basically no impact on the user level.
However, both mobike and the public comment have circled a wave of users, saying that if it is changed, will it waste the original brand value?
As for Didi, after the old business was renamed, the cognitive threshold was raised. Is it really necessary to go to such trouble?
With these questions, the minibus consulted some big names in brand strategy and internet industry. Let's see what they said.
Being a sub-brand or building a new brand is an important choice for the Internet industry to do new business. The key is whether we serve one user group or need to separate multiple user groups.
Multi-brands are common in industries that need to use brands to divide user groups. A single brand is a variety of businesses that run to the same user group through the power of a brand.
Specific to Meituan, its current product status is an App that meets the needs of urban users to eat, drink and have fun.
Imagine such a scene, Meituan Huang * * * enjoys riding all over the street, reminding users of Meituan's brand memory. Users must use Meituan App for high-frequency riding behavior, which completes the product closed loop: improving the daily life of Meituan App and attracting users to use other services of Meituan.
Public comment brand seems to be another script, but it may actually be the same story. Initially, Meituan and Dianping had a "peer-to-peer merger" with a shareholding ratio of about 7: 4, and the company was named "Meituan Dianping". However, after that, most of the founders and key executives of Dianping left the merged company.
I once praised the public comment on the development of urban life information services, just like installing traffic lights, painting zebra crossings and other infrastructure, but at the same time, I also admitted that the transaction volume of e-commerce is far greater than information services, and it is inevitable that the US Mission's transactions (especially the explosive growth of take-out at that time) will absorb the information of comments.
As far as Didi is concerned, I am not optimistic about Didi's current multi-brand choice. Although it is an understandable short-term choice to use "green vegetable carpooling" to transform the carpooling business that has troubled its development, "Flower Pig" is a low-end preferential business; However, when users open the Didi App, we will naturally choose taxis, express trains, special cars and even bicycles. We belong to a huge user group, not multiple user groups that need to be separated.
Company brand is mainly aimed at investors, government, media and other stakeholders, in order to better let stakeholders identify and understand the company's commercial brand.
When it comes to Meituan, the proportion of review business income is getting lower and lower, and it is no longer possible to use Meituan reviews to reflect Meituan's business strategy. Therefore, upgrading Meituan and weakening comments are the inevitable steps of brand adjustment in the capital market.
This name change is actually an adjustment at the company brand level, which does not mean that a single brand should be adopted at the product brand level. In fact, Meituan must be a multi-brand strategy. I don't think Meituan will adjust the brand of "Public Comment" in the short term.
The two brands "mobike" and "Elephant Division" previously adjusted by Meituan actually represent the strategic adjustment of Meituan's two businesses, which are intended to supplement rather than seek dominance. In this case, it is the right decision to cancel the independent brand.
Generally speaking, there are three strategic approaches to the choice of enterprise brand combination strategy, namely, single brand, main and deputy brands and multi-brands.
A single brand concentrates its superior strength and maximizes its competitive advantage.
Usually, in a key industry and market, when the enterprise is in the initial stage of establishment or the category is in the period of introduction and rapid development, the target market for brand positioning is large enough and the market competitiveness is strong enough, and the enterprise can get the maximum return by investing in a single brand.
The disadvantage of this strategy is that when the market is mature or there are strong brands in the market segment, the influence of a single brand is difficult to compete with the leading brands in the market segment. If the new opportunity market reappears, the coverage and extension ability of a single brand will be limited by the original brand, and it will be difficult to obtain the leading brand position.
Multi-brand is suitable for the period when the enterprise develops to a certain scale and volume. When an enterprise's business forms are diversified and cover multiple markets, in order to maximize market share or cover different target markets, multi-brands will better help enterprises to gain a leading position.
However, multi-brand has a great test on brand combination strategy, brand investment budget allocation and operation team of different brands.
Meituan and Didi are both platform companies, and the reason why they adopt completely different brand strategies is closely related to their different competitive patterns.
It is worth mentioning that the brands such as "mobike" and "Public Comment" acquired by Meituan did not simply and rudely de-brand at first, but gave enterprises and users a certain adaptation transition period. From this perspective, the single brand of Meituan did not waste the value of the original brand, because the brand value often goes with the users. If users can move to the new brand with them, the value of the original brand will be transferred.
But for Didi, it is far from forming a relatively stable competition pattern. In this case, dealing with different competitors through different brands will be more flexible and targeted in gameplay, and it will also stimulate the competitive awareness and innovation awareness of various business divisions.
The multi-brands used by Didi will indeed bring some internal friction to a certain extent, but compared with the security risks and potential competition they have been facing, it is still worthwhile. What's more, Didi can enjoy resources and minimize internal friction by building an intermediate platform.
The biggest disadvantage of single brand strategy is that if the target of communication is very different, or if its own brand is defective, it will have the opposite effect.
For example, if the brand of washing powder is a cross-border catering brand, it is estimated that no one will want to eat it. This is the embarrassment of forming a single brand.
The disadvantages of multi-brand are also obvious, which requires a lot of money to do consumer cognition, leading to high brand building and difficult communication.
As far as Meituan is concerned, all kinds of products it has integrated this time are actually around the life service itself. Therefore, for a specific group of people, a unified and powerful brand provides a high-quality guarantee and has been recognized by users.
In addition, the brands acquired by Meituan, such as mobike and Dianping, have a certain influence, but they have not formed a strong brand awareness for users.
For Didi, choosing multiple brands is more a strategy designed from the perspective of brand risk than putting all the eggs in one basket. In addition, Didi has strong operational capabilities and user resources, and the cost of guiding customers with multiple brands is not high. Therefore, in the long run, this is a good choice.
Personally, I think many companies are not so obsessed with naming as the outside world thinks, but more often driven by their inertia.
For example, Meituan has always been the naming habit of Meituan to buy food and Meituan XX; Microsoft's Windows, Microsoft's Office；; Oracle Bone Inscriptions's database, Oracle Bone Inscriptions's ERP and so on, in fact, most companies do the same.
So we can't simply think that such a naming action must be the result of careful consideration.
If you have to name a new brand, there must be a big gap between the two brands.
As for Didi, it has recently taken different names in different businesses. I think this is because there are some innovative teams inside Didi that are building a series of experimental products.
Because it is experimental, it should be separated from the original subjects to avoid damaging the value of the original brand during the experiment.
As for why it is called green vegetables or flower pigs, it is also in line with the younger naming style of some internet companies recently, and attracts everyone's attention with some more intimate, interesting and catchy words.
Author | Half-monthly talk | Interview | Deng | Editor on duty | Zou Yanzhu
Editor | He Editor | Zheng