Rip off the plaster
When rebranding becomes necessary, do it decisively, exhaustively and quickly.
Issue № 115 | London, Sunday 10 November 2024
Welcome to your Trump-free corner of the Internet. Read on to learn why:
① Easy and memorable beats distinctive and clever.
② Your name is not your brand.
③ Wealth managers need to understand private markets.
④ Banks should optimise their resource allocation for growth and stability.
⑤ AI and personalisation are set to boost the effectiveness of B2B advertising.
⑥ The tension over return-to-office policies shows no sign of abating.
⑦ The financial markets of the future depend on digital money.
📸 But first, flashback to last week when I told you that Google will be facing real competition in search. This week, ChatGPT launched its search product.
What's new
JP Morgan rebranded its blockchain unit to Kinexys, Ledger Insights reports.
In short:
“JP Morgan has rebranded its Onyx blockchain unit to Kinexys by JP Morgan. […] The new name combines the concepts of ‘kinetic’ and ‘connection’, to reflect the worldwide movement of money, assets and financial information using the efficiencies of DLT. The highest profile Onyx solution is the blockchain based bank account system, JPM Coin Systems, which enables corporates to move money between JP Morgan accounts in different countries, in real time and 24/7. That is now rebranded to Kinexys Digital Payments.”
“The bank is spinning the rebrand as a positive step, as one would expect. However, the trigger is likely trademark issues. Given Onyx is a generic word, it would encounter potential challenges. A company that was already using the name might have objected to trademark applications or even alleged infringement.”
“Last June the bank applied for trademarks for Onyx Digital Payments and Onyx Digital Assets. The records show the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office examiner sent initial refusals for the trademarks on various grounds, including partial overlaps with existing trademarks for similar use cases and other applications that pre-dated these applications. Given JP Morgan’s lawyers didn’t respond, the applications were treated as abandoned.”
Why it matters
This story positions what JP Morgan has done as a rebrand - and to some degree it is, the bank clearly wants to build a brand around this new business line - but I think it’s important to distinguish ‘name’ and ‘brand’. Your brand is bigger than your name and includes all the other elements that determine how your customers feel when they think about you, such as tagline, tone of voice, and visual appearance. That aside, the article matters because JP Morgan are schooling us in how to do this sort of thing well.
Although they’ve come up with a narrative to explain the name - reflecting what the business is about: the worldwide movement of money, assets and financial information using distributed ledger technology - it’s clear that what was really driving the change was uncertainty over their ownership of the IP. What’s impressive is that they’ve acted decisively and quickly chosen an alternative that is just as good.
This recalls Monzo Bank. The neobank enjoys such brand recognition nowadays that many don’t even remember that it started life as Mondo in 2015. After a legal challenge, the management team decided to simply change one letter. The new name didn’t have the clever ‘world’ connotations of the original but no one cares and I’d argue it’s actually a better fit: slightly irreverent.
This kind of situation isn’t uncommon. Innovation teams operate fast and often without all the due diligence or corporate frameworks that more mainstream parts of the business are subject too. But at some point they need to grow up. JP Morgan’s blockchain platform has now executed more than $1.5 trillion since launch, with current volumes exceeding $2 billion daily. That might still by tiny compared to the $10 trillion in conventional payments the bank processes daily but it’s clearly time for the business line to come out of the sandpit and prepare to be institutionalised.
What to do about it
Take action
① If it does become necessary to change a name:
Be decisive and act early: You may hesitate over jettisoning a name you’ve spent time building awareness of. Don’t. It will never be easier to do than today.
Consider product hierarchy: Is the name going to grow with your offering? Does it offer a framework that will work with your existing product lines and accommodate more in the future?
Prioritise digital real estate: We live in a digital age. Any name you choose needs to have website domains and social media handles available and lend itself to portrait orientated logos.
Aim for easy and memorable over distinctive and clever: The brand consultants will spend money like sailors coming up with clever names and narratives. No one will remember them. Keep it simple.
② And finally, don’t agonise over it too much. Founders, perhaps because of their emotional attachment to their products, are prone to fixating on finding the ‘right’ name. The truth is that the mundane-sounding considerations above are more important. If you doubt that, consider that there’s a personal technology company in Cupertino that’s doing pretty well - and they named the company after nothing more evocative than a common fruit. Your name is part of your brand but it’s by no means the most important part.
Get help
IMTW is brought to you by InMarketing, a strategic advisory service for senior leadership teams in B2B finance and technology. It can help you with:
🔎 Audit 🧭 Strategy 🖋️ Messaging ✅ Planning 🤷🏻 Problem-solving ☎️ Counsel
Top stories
The other articles that are worthy of your time.
FINANCE
Why younger investors are embracing private markets
③ Wealth managers need to understand private markets.
“A recent survey found that high-net-worth investors 43 and younger are allocating only 28% of their portfolios to publicly traded equities, which is around half the exposure of older investors. Meanwhile, Gen Z and millennials are holding 17% of their portfolios in alternative investments such as private equity, which is more than three times the allocation of Gen X and baby boomers."
“Younger investors have longer time horizons, fewer liquidity needs, and a higher risk tolerance than their parents or grandparents. As a result, they are better positioned to take advantage of opportunities in longer-duration assets that historically have offered greater return potential than other asset classes.”
“Millennial and Gen Z investors have grown up in an era of passive investing, where conventional wisdom says to own the broad market and not worry about security selection. Yet indexing has been tested in recent years by a series of market shocks, including the global financial crisis in 2008. Today, passive strategies are being driven by just a handful of mega-cap tech stocks, as market breadth has narrowed to record levels, raising real questions if this is the best long-term way to diversify an investor’s portfolio. This has allowed younger investors to revisit their assumptions about active investing—but in the private markets.”
TECHNOLOGY
Why banks should rethink ‘every company is a software company’
④ Banks should optimise their resource allocation for growth and stability.
“The financial sector’s spending on AI is projected to experience substantial growth, with an estimated increase from $35 billion in 2023 to $97 billion in 2027. But as financial institutions rush to embrace these technologies, there’s increasing risk they are straying too far from their core strengths.”
“Given the significant challenges associated with in-house AI development, financial services institutions would be wise to instead double down on their core competencies—areas where they have traditionally excelled and that are critical to their long-term success — while outsourcing their AI strategy to established experts.
“Mastery in core areas — such as risk management, customer relationships, regulatory compliance, and financial advisory services — is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge and delivering value to customers. By diving into building inhouse expensive AI teams headfirst, they risk spreading themselves too thin and losing focus on the priorities that brought them to prominence.”
MEDIA & MARKETING
Demandbase’s State of B2B Advertising report
⑤ AI and personalisation are set to boost the effectiveness of B2B advertising.
“Privacy-forward advertising will become the new normal: B2B advertising is increasingly focused on privacy-compliant strategies that build trust while maintaining effective targeting.”
“Influencer marketing is now critical for B2B success: B2B brands leveraging industry influencers are better positioned to engage decision-makers and build trust with target accounts.”
“The manual ad era is over: Manual ad placements are becoming obsolete as programmatic advertising, powered by AI, streamlines efficiency, optimises spend, and enhances targeting precision.”
WILDCARD
Amazon’s CEO defends return-to-office policy
⑥ The tension over return-to-office policies shows no sign of abating.
“Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is pushing back on claims that his return-to-office mandate was a ‘backdoor layoff.’ In a transcript of an all-hands staff meeting, Jassy said the move ‘is very much about our culture and strengthening our culture’.”
“In September, Amazon announced that it would start making employees return to the office five days per week starting January 2nd, 2025. The e-commerce giant previously required employees to work in the office three days per week. Some speculated that the five-day-per-week mandate is a ‘layoff in disguise,’ intended to push out employees who couldn’t or wouldn’t make the full return.”
“Many Amazons employees aren’t happy with the return to office mandate, with some even threatening to quit. Last month, hundreds of employees signed a letter in protest of comments from Amazon Web Services head Matt Garman, who said ‘there are other companies around’ for workers who don’t want to come in five days per week.”
Off cuts
The stories that almost made this week’s newsletter.
FINANCE
👏🏻 Goldman to name biggest partner class since 2010
🇬🇧 Schroders Americas CEO Phil Middleton to become head of UK
💸 Citi revamps pay for wealth bankers
🪨 BlackRock passes $1tn sustainable milestone
🛒 Barclays acquires Tesco Bank
TECHNOLOGY
💪🏻 US fintech giant Affirm muscles into UK’s buy-now pay-later market
🪙 Citi, Fidelity Intl combine money market fund tokenisation with FX swaps
👋 FCA welcomes Project Guardian’s first industry report on tokenisation
👮🏻♂️ US regulators must take reins on fintech oversight - bank associations
⛓️ Caisse des Dépôts issues €100m digital bond settled with pilot wCBDC
MEDIA & MARKETING
🗞️ Why publishers with lists are saying audience, not content, is the new ‘king’
💰 How much budget do you need for content marketing?
🤖 Washington Post launches an AI product after losing 250K subscribers while New York Times passes 11 million subscribers
📓 Why brand historians are CMOs’ new best friends
🧵 Threads now has 275M monthly active users
The last word
⑦ Xiaonan Zou, UBS’ head digital assets, Group Treasury, on digital money:
“In addition to [digital cash initiatives] role in correspondent banking, they also have the potential to streamline and simplify the settlement of tokenised assets in the capital market.”
Don’t settle for marketing.
Strive for InMarketing.
Wishing you a productive week,
P.S. Wondering what to do today? I can recommend the Royal Academy.