Mini-Brands
Why they keep getting smaller.
The past few weeks I’ve started to notice something new. It’s not the paintings of Santa Claus and Rudolph splashed on the side of every department store window, or the lights that were hung days and weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. Don’t get me wrong, those are eventful and this is by far my favorite time of year.
What I’m referring to is the up and coming “mini-brand”. There seem to be an awful lot of these little guys showing up, names like WaMu, BevMo, PacSun and AmEx. This isn’t a new phenomena, brands like Orchard Supply Hardware, Kentucky Fried Chicken Kitchen Fresh Chicken and Bank of America have learned to shorten their names (OSH, KFC and BofA) for years. What’s odd about this new breed of mini-brands is how absurd they seem, its as if someone at the board meeting said “Oh crap, we don’t have a name that we can abbreviate, lets just takeout some letters and try to get it down to 4-5 obscure characters.”