A vowel please, Carol

In celebration of its first profit increase in three years, the company formerly known as Abrdn is splashing out and buying back the vowels.

While much has been made of the demise of the English language, with social media and the prevalence of messenger communications boiling whole sentences down to often head-scratching abbreviations and acronyms, the absence of these three precious letters has caused quite the headache for the fund manager since they were omitted from its rebrand in 2021.

The result of the merger of Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management, the Abrdn brand was designed to symbolise its “modern, agile, digitally-enabled” identity and create a point of differentiation in the marketplace. According to then CEO, it reflected the “clarity of focus that the leadership team are bringing to the business”. While it certainly served in getting people talking about the company, it wasn’t for the reasons intended, instead inspiring persistent controversy for the following four years. It particularly caught the critical imagination of the press, with the name choice haunting the company’s media reporting and a column inch rarely going by without a fresh jibe. So much so the CIO resorted to calling out “corporate bullying” last year, cultivating a less than sympathetic front page from City AM apologising for “tkng th pss ot of yr mssng vwls”. Ouch.

It is not only the rather pernickety nature of the apparent faux par, but sheer breadth and longevity of its criticism that’s a real demonstration of the tightrope on which a brand balances. And not just in the fickle and fiercely competitive spaces of the consumer industries, but equally in the more corporate as is clear here. Even the lettering of the title for a (already very credible and well respected) investment company caused prolonged outcry and criticism from media, market analysts, industry peers and internal stakeholders alike. 

That so much market and consumer integrity can hinge on a decision to e or not to e is a stark reminder to all businesses of the importance of an expertly guided and diligent process where branding is concerned. Not just in the development of the identity or visual concepts but also the thorough interrogation of any new or changed proposition, testing among stakeholder groups and – even more importantly – listening to the feedback, however hard it may be to hear, and manoeuvring accordingly. As I’m sure the Abrdn team can testify, cutting corners can be costly: doing a job half really does mean doing it twice.

The newly announced re-rebrand is couched in a wider business goal to “remove distractions” and, according to the current CEO, “marks a new phase for the organisation, as we focus on delivering for our customers, people and shareholders”. Of course, we can’t ignore the irony that its name has once again served to lead the national headlines instead of the news of its significant financial performance. Oops.

Heralding a new chapter, the firm is now simply to be known as aberdeen group… with no capital A. Whether this too poses a risky grammatical decision for the brand remains to be seen. What is for sure is that it will play havoc with the auto-correct on every written platform, so it won’t be winning over the media any time soon.