Some Rebranding Ideas of a Different Sort

Ordinarily, I try not to get terribly personal in this space. What we do here — put out a B-to-B magazine, a weekly e-newsletter and an informational Web site, rather than a catalog, sales-oriented e-mail or e-commerce Web site — isn’t a whole lot like what you do. We do share a common bond, of course: the catalog/multichannel business is our daily focus.

This month, however, I did find a common bond in our daily regimen and thought I’d share a recent rebranding experience we had. As always, I hope you’ll gain some ideas you can apply to your own business.

Late last year, we decided our weekly tips e-newsletter, Idea Factory, needed to be redesigned, renamed and rebranded. This was partly because we needed a catchier title, partly because our parent company, North American Publishing Co., scheduled a redesign of all its e-newsletters and partly because we weren’t terribly crazy about this newsletter being referred to as a “factory.” And naturally, our powers-that-be must constantly seek ways to attract more advertising to grow the franchise.

We all know the many ways catalogers and others name and brand their properties, whether they’re catalog titles, newsletter or magazine names, product names, or others. Many use founders’ names (Dell, L.L. Bean), some combine founder names with the locations in which they were founded (Williams-Sonoma, Lillian Vernon), and others have more functional titles (PC Connection, Restoration Hardware).

‘Catalog Success … Something or Other’
Retaining Catalog Success as a part of the title was a no-brainer for us. That left us with, “Catalog Success … something or other.” But the second half came along fairly easily. We stuck with the functional motif, and wound up with the title that best describes what our e-newsletter is all about: Catalog Success: Tactics & Tips.