Let me get this right. Back in Feb 2009, when Age Concern and Help the Aged decided to merge, they registered the new charity, under the legal name of Age UK and then announced they were launching a rebranding exercise to come up with a puker new name.
Corporate Edge, the branding consultancy was hired and money spent. Nobody knows how much but it is thought to be less than £100,000.
Today, 10 months later, the charity has decided stick with the name they first came up with. Now call me an old cynic, which I am, but I bet my boots that the reason they have taken all of this time to come back to where they started is that they couldn’t agree with any of the alternatives.
I have nothing against Age UK; it is a perfectly decent and acceptable name. As I said in a previous post, the one thing that was certain, was that the new name was going to contain the word ‘age’. This constraint means there are not that many alternatives. Apparently a couple of the names that didn’t make the grade are Agenda and Age Matters.
Maybe I am being really dumb but the names of the two organisations had a meaning. Age concern – pretty obvious; Help the aged – pretty obvious. What significance and meaning does ‘UK’ in Age UK add?
I wonder if Corporate Edge will use Age UK as a reference client? I guess the selling pitch would go something like this: “ Age UK were so impressed with our work that after 10 months they rejected all of our brand name suggestions and used the one they came up with in the back of a taxi..”
Enough, enough, the deed is done, the name is in place. Best wishes to Age UK. Dick Stroud
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