Failing the Pub Test: Abrdn and the curious incident of the missing vowels.
Oh Abrdn, we hardly knew ye.
Or, more accurately, far too many of us knew you, for a brief period, for entirely the wrong reasons.
As the company once known as Standard Life Aberdeen, then Abrdn, has now decided to call itself The Aberdeen Group following three years in vowel-less wilderness, it’s worth asking what exactly went wrong? How did a rebrand become the story, rather than tell the story it was designed to carry?
The first thing to say, is the shift to Abrdn in theory made sense. I can imagine the strategy deck even now: ‘bring a technological, data-driven edge to our identity,‘embody our modern and progressive ethos’, ‘reduce associations with amid-sized granite-hued Scottish city.’ At the time, the company pronounced a shift to a “modern, agile, digitally-enabled brand”.
So far, financial services rebranding as usual. And then came the accusations of ‘corporate bullying’, winking nods to ‘irritable vowel syndrome’ and Countdown-inspired memes.
The problem, as is so often the case with high profile branding mishaps, was a failure to appreciate that theoretical strategy needs to come with a healthy dose of real-world sense-checking.
To some extent, the scale of the Abrdn backlash was unfortunate, if not exactly unpredictable.Coming at a time when vowelless names had fallen out of fashion and when the alluring, idealistic sheen of Silicon Valley had thoroughly worn off, it’s easy to see “Abrdn” as an example of the worst excesses of Californian tech branding inflicted on a stodgy British institution. Scotland is not San Jose, and complex fund management is not microblogging.
But I think Abrdn’s biggest error was to fail to apply “The Pub Test”. A simple, hypothetical exercise that should come before every name change is enacted. ThePub Test is, at heart, an exercise in empathy. Imagine two of your customers, or investors, or clients, or indeed employees discussing your brand over a hypothetical pint after a long day’s work. Does it sound natural in conversation? Can it be easily corrupted into a rude word? Does it produce eye-rolling or giggling?
It's not hard to imagine financial advisors across the UK tittering into their pints of Peroni as they attempt to say “Aberdeen” without the “e”s that make it an actual word. In a category that needs to inspire trust, confidence and competence, it’s not a good look to first inspire stuttering.
The reason why the Pub Test is so important isn’t simply practical, however. It’s a very powerful reminder that brands don’t exist in guideline documents, bibles, or even in logos and ad campaigns. They exist, always, in the heads of people. The moment a brand is unleashed on the world, it starts to become public property.Out of the brand manager’s direct control, an amorphous mass of shifting associations, perceptions, difficult to define feelings.
Weight Watchers, which briefly became “WW” with much fanfare and then returned to Weight Watchers very quietly, is perhaps the most high profile Pub Test failure. Although in their case, perhaps the test better takes place in a smoothie bar. Again, the strategy feels unimpeachable: diet culture had grown increasingly toxic, body positivity was the new watchword, ‘wellness’ was the booming category. So ditching the reference to weight and positioning the brand as “wellness that works” made some sort of sense. The problem, though, was twofold. Everyone knew, whether they loved it or hated it, what Weight Watchers did. Nobody had a clue what two “w”s next to one another signified. The beginning of a web address? Wrestling or wildlife?. A US president’s nickname? Add to this the fact that these two letters manage to form four whole syllables, and you’ve got a theoretically well positioned brand that is practically unfit for use. People looking to shed a few pounds don’t have the access to, or any interest in, carefully crafted brand playbooks.
Even as the numbers of pubs decline in the UK, week on week, the test is, I would argue more important than ever. Visit LinkedIn today as a branding or marketing person, and you could be forgiven that every successful brand is: a digital start up; minimally and sleekly designed; carrying a quirkily abstract name; yielding an ever-so-slightly cheeky tone of voice and measuring success through enormous conversion stats and eye-popping dollar valuations.
This is not branding. And it certainly isn’t branding advice. It’s corporate strategy as cosplay. Brands built for investor meetings and algorithms, where the customer is an unnecessary afterthought. And as marketers increasingly get their hands on the toy box of Generative AI, it’s hard not to see more of these uncanny psuedo-brands proliferating. Entities and identities that look a little like brands should look like, sound a little like brands should sound, but which are ultimately concatenations of words and images that don’t have any real meaning.
So rest in peace Abrdn. You served a timely reminder that all of our brands don’t really belong to us. They belong to, and exist in, the real world. The people have spoken. Because as every brand consultant, marketer or strategist should know by now, that’s what they do.
Read the article in Design Week
Image by Shutterstock
