What’s In a Name? A Lot, It Turns Out

The media business is in the midst of a rebranding revolution.

From Wall Street-facing corporate trade names to consumer-facing channels and streaming services, the disruption rippling across the sector seems to be causing executives to rethink or reinforce what their brands stand for. And in some cases, of course, corporate disruption is leading to some forced rebranding, and executives running those businesses have no choice but to adapt and make the best of it.

In just the last few weeks, a couple of the country’s largest publishers changed their names from Gannett to USA Today Inc. and Dotdash Meredith to People Inc., taking on their name of their most prominent media brand. ESPN and CNN launched new consumer-facing streaming services called … ESPN and CNN, while Apple TV decided to drop the “+” from its own service in the name of simplicity.

The cable company Altice will become Optimum, as its competitor Charter prepares to become Cox.

But there’s probably no rebranding story more of the moment than NBCUniversal’s plan to spin out its cable channels into the newly-named Versant (as in “conversant,” no French accent required). Within Versant, CNBC will keep its name, but MSNBC will be forced to become MS NOW. Got that?

Inside Versant, the decision was initially met with confusion. Why would CNBC get to keep the NBC but MSNBC can’t? While CNBC does technically stand for Consumer News and Business Channel, there was a decision made at the corporate level to allow it to keep the NBC name (the initial deal is for five years, per an SEC filing, although it could be extended), and it along with MS NOW will lose access to the NBC peacock logo.

Rebecca Kutler, MS NOW’s president, told reporters last week that she fought to keep “MS” in the new name as they were brainstorming ideas. “We understand that it is a challenge, and we are here for it,” Kutler said. MS NOW, by the way, stands for “My Source for News, Opinion and the World.”

But Versant has done a good job of getting the employees amped up about the change, although there is little doubt that there has been a warming up period.

“My first reaction was, this is going to be a headache, and this may come from my own background of having to rebrand things in the past,” said Jen Psaki, one of the network’s primetime hosts, and the former White House Press Secretary. But Psaki noted how at the MSNBC Live event last month she encountered viewers who were so excited to see certain talent, and that loyalty, combined with Versant’s $20 million marketing push, put her at ease.

“There is a commitment and dedication to certain faces that are part of the brand, that made me feel better,” she said.

“I saw this as the kid grows up and is now leaving home,” added Michael Steele, the former RNC chairman who is now an MSNBC host. “For me it kind of made sense: You are coming out of this sort of iconic label, MSNBC with its own storylines and narratives. For me it was a nice transition to something that was a little more in the moment, and focused on real people.”

In conversations with marketing experts, one thing became clear: Versant (or for that matter People Inc. or Optimum) doesn’t mean much, but MS NOW (or ESPN, or CNN) does.

“A corporate brand matters when you’re speaking or trying to make a connection with a specific audience,” says Trevor Edwards, the former president of the Nike Brand who now serves as a strategic advisor to companies and investment firms. “Versant has no relationship with the audience other than it exists as a holding organization, so that it brings you MS NOW, or it brings you CNBC or whatever those different brands do. So those brands’ job is to define a certain product, service or experience that they’ll bring to the consumer. The holding company doesn’t matter.”

David Reibstein, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, says that while a holding company brand (like Versant) may matter to some Wall Street analysts, distributors, or other commercial relationships, in most cases their job is simply to be a holding company, a la Procter & Gamble, a shell to hold and incubate other brands, though he notes that in the media space it is possible to have a corporate brand that actually matters to consumers.

“There’s two different strategies that a company could use, and I refer to them as the ‘house of brands,’ or the ‘branded house,'” Reibstein says. “Most consumers don’t have any idea of ​​Unilever is, and Unilever has a whole bunch of different brands that are really well known to consumers having no idea that they all come from Unilever. So that’s a house of brands, the alternative strategy is the branded house: I want to call everything Disney.”

Disney is a brand that means something to consumers in a way that Paramount, for example, doesn’t.

“Many corporate brands are sometimes dealing with that, which is, ‘do I need another brand to speak specifically, or do I use my voice, the big company brand to do that?'” Edwards says. “I always think about it very simply as: When the brand brings an authority, a more powerful, deeper, more enriching connection, then you want to bring that brand along with you. And that’s because you know clearly what your brand is and what it stands for all of the time. And then sometimes it might be that another brand is the better way to do that, because the consumer wants to have a more more exclusive experience.”

A good example of that brand and authority comes from ESPN, which decided to launch its flagship streaming service under the brand name … ESPN.

“As we explored options, we kept coming back to our four letters: ESPN,” ESPN chief Jimmy Pitaro told reporters earlier this year. “There’s power in our name and there’s trust in our name, including, by the way, from the younger generation who love ESPN, and they see us as a digital first brand. ESPN is the place of record, and we represent the very best in sports. So that’s what we’re calling it. ESPN. Simple, straightforward, clear.”

“Everybody knows what ESPN is, so if they’re going to come up with a streaming version of their particular service it would be silly to come up with another name, since it still resides within ESPN, and they’re capitalizing on all the awareness and all of the understanding of what ESPN is,” Reibstein says. “So it will get a running start, just because it is ESPN streaming and so they’re able to take advantage of that.”

In a world with a lot of garbage and content and content’s sake, brands matter more than ever. So if there is a brand that resonates, it can help a company stand out,

“People want to go to things that they can trust. You might every now and then, try a new thing, but when you’re doing something regularly, you want something you can trust. You want to know what it stands for,” Edwards says. “It doesn’t mean they won’t try some new things, right? But I do think that brands serve as a great way for you to navigate through an environment that has so much coming at you all the time, every single moment of the day.”

Of course, as MS NOW demonstrates, sometimes the brand doesn’t get a say in the matter. In that case, executives need to push forward, and get everyone who works for them to go along for the ride.

“I think consumers are often averse to change, by definition, so people are not going to like it,” Edwards says. “You usually end up in a neutral place, or they don’t like it, but that doesn’t mean they won’t like it over time. Sometimes you have to have the conviction that, ‘hey, I’d like to take the brand from here to there. I have conviction that this is right.'”

In the case of Versant and its $20 million effort to rebrand MSNBC to MS NOW, the executives have conviction in the “Same Mission. New Name” effort.

“If this were five years ago, I would have been like ‘oh my god, how are we going to do this,’” quipped Morning Joe hosted by Joe Scarborough. “Everything is so fluid now in the media landscape.”

That applies to brand names, too.