Yes, I know SAVVIS has bigger problems at the moment. But since the company is all over the news, I’ve noticed it has a brand-identity issue as well.
Specifically, the company’s style for its name in text is “SAVVIS,” which is consistent with its all-caps logo treatment. But journalists refer to the company as “Savvis” — because according to AP style, all-caps is used only if each letter is pronounced as a separate letter (e.g., IBM).
As I’ve advised before (see “Where Journalists and Marketers Collide, #324: Capitalization of Brand Names“), companies generally are better off with a straightforward approach to capitalization in branding — one that is consistent across the board and that jibes with AP style.
The value in this approach is that it makes it much easier to uphold brand standards — not only with the media, but with employees, business partners, and customers as well.
Inconsistencies, by contrast, can diminish a brand’s impact.
SAVVIS provides a perfect example. The company signed a $70 million deal with the owner of the St. Louis Blues for naming rights to the Blues’ arena. But the Blues’ Web site and all its materials refer to the arena as the “Savvis Center.”
If I’m paying that much money for naming rights, don’t I want the treatment of the name to be consistent? Answer: Yes.
On a secondary note, I noticed the company is sometimes referred to as SAVVIS and sometimes as SAVVIS Communications. Turns out the name was changed from the latter to the former in May — another reason to keep things simple in the first place.
Technorati tags: Journalism, PR, Public Relations, Marketing, Savvis, Branding
Tags: dallas marketing, dallas marketing agencies, marketing dallas
Nicole of the Capital Idea blog sent me these thoughts in an e-mail and gave me permission to share them. Marketers, take heed:
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I have unnaturally strong feelings on the topic and think that, in general, all company names should start with a capital letter, with the rest lowercase, unless the word is an initialism. Even acronyms, according to AP, become lowercase when they are more than six letters. (I’d prefer to lower that to five or six or more letters, even.)
Have you read Bill Walsh’s books Lapsing Into a Comma and The Elephants of Style? I think you’d enjoy them. In any case, Bill has a section in Elephants on the topic that is a good read:
“You’re a writer, not a logo replicator, and the capitalization of proper nouns is one of the most basic principles of English orthography. … Decisions about capitalization are ultimately the responsibility of writers and editors, not corporate hucksters. … Use all caps for names that aren’t initialisms and your writing will look like a cheesy news release. At the other extreme, the all-lowercase fad deprives readers of the most basic of visual cues.”
Another exception comes with the delayed caps, such as in eBay and iPod. Most copy editors don’t mind those, under the theory that the capital letter — to signify the presence of a proper noun — is at least quite near the beginning of the word. Similar to deBerg or other such last names.
Did you have any idea my response could go on for so long? Truth be told, I probably could have written three times as much.
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That’s why Media Orchard loves you, Nicole!