Reputations are slippery things, often conjuring much different images than originally intended. Sometimes it’s because a side venture has overwhelmed the core product in importance; that happened with U.S. News & World Report when its ancillary business rating hospitals, schools, and doctors grew bigger than its original product. Sometimes it’s because new, often unsavory discoveries demolish old images; think of Bill Cosby. And sometimes it’s because the world has changed.
You could say Marvin Windows and Doors recognized that shift with its announcement that it was eliminating the Integrity Windows and Doors as well as the Marvin Windows and Doors brand and uniting all its products under a single name: Marvin.
Marvin put its three new product lines—Signature, Elevate, and Essential—on a scale from “More Flexible” to “More Streamlined,” but they also happen to match a best/better/good price model. That’s important, because Marvin Windows and Doors was getting known for high-quality but pricey wood products at a time in which high-end builders increasingly were opting for cheaper windows and doors. As one sales rep told me a few years ago, it used to be that a builder erecting a home in his territory would start considering Marvin if the home’s sales price was above $300,000, but now that threshold had risen to $500,000. Non-wood products were filling that gap and, there’s little doubt today that they’ve pushed the threshold for considering Marvin even higher.
Marvin had an alternative—tout its Integrity line of pultruded fiberglass products—but that required making the builder pivot to an entirely different brand name and material. As Integrity grew in popularity while the Marvin name got stuck in an ever-narrowing high-end niche, the company basically decided it was better to sell several lines under one name, and use that one name to promote a general image of quality as opposed to linking a brand to a particular customer niche or material. Thus, the change.
(By the way: Note how removing “Windows and Doors” from the brand name opens it up to selling other stuff. That’s another advantage Marvin will reap from its change.)
Sometimes one word can alter your brand’s image significantly. Years ago, Parr Lumber’s slogan was “Where the Builders Go.” While good, Parr’s marketers concluded this could make some potentially good retail customers feel as if they weren’t allowed to shop there. So, Parr tweaked its slogan to declare, “Go where the builders go.” It also added instructions to its website on how to do robust DIY projects, like building a deck, putting up a gazebo, or winterizing a home. The one additional word brought in new customers without turning off existing ones.
There are cases in which altering your brand turns out to be a mistake because your motivation was a passing fancy. In the 1990s, as individual hospitals started forming healthcare systems that took in doctor’s offices, labs, and clinics, the American Hospital Association decided it needed a name that reflected its members’ expanded status. So, the organization decided to ape AARP and create a new logo that downplayed the hospitals name. The new logo showed “AHA” in huge letters and then below it the slogan “Advancing Health in America.” There was no reference to hospitals.
Within a couple of years, AHA abandoned that logo and created one that once again spelled out its name. I worked there at the time, and I remember the hospital association president being irked by how many letters were coming in addressed to Advancing Health in America.
The association found it could revert because it concluded that when the public thought of a hospital, it no longer envisioned only a traditional building with ERs and maternity wards. Rather, the public automatically was attaching clinics and other peripherals to the hospital brand. Thus, AHA didn’t need to alter its name; the word “hospital” and that big blue “H” you see on road signs was all the image it needed to make the desired connection.
Dealers typically think most about branding when they decide on the name of their company. Rather than follow others and use its family name—Torrisi—to launch the company, the founders of Jackson Lumber took its company’s name from the street where the lumberyard began. There were several other lumberyards in Lawrence with names attached to other ethnic groups, and Jackson’s founders didn’t want to be known as “the Italian lumber yard.”
Likewise, when L.T. Gibson launched U.S. LBM, he first labeled it “US LBM” without the periods to emphasize that the company was “about the people … our employees, our vendors, our customers, and the residents of the communities where we help build homes.” But later, he said in his book about the company, he inserted periods that turned the name into U.S. LBM “to signify that we are willing to go anywhere … to partner with the right business.”
“To me the ‘U.S.’ still means ‘us,’” Gibson wrote. It’s a noble sentiment. It’s also a convenient play on words that enables U.S. LBM’s projected brand to adjust with the times and the circumstances.
Not all companies have such options. Marvin, for one, decided it had to adjust. You shouldn’t be afraid of doing the same.
