How exactly to Rebrand A social media And Live To tell On It

02 Aug How exactly to Rebrand A social media And Live To tell On It

Some one carry out grab its pitchforks, sign up good posse, and you can burn off the internet down

Editor’s Notice: Invitees contributor Catherine Plan is the Vice president, Brand name Means regarding MeetMe, Inc., a myspace and facebook for meeting new-people, and you may co-maker from MeetMe’s predecessor myYearbook. She worked on this subject blog post having Geoff Cook () and you can Jeremy Zorn, all of MeetMe, Inc. Find out more at the their weblog:

Imagine the outcry in the event the Fb were to change its label. That evening even as we made a decision to perform some unthinkable: rebrand a social network used by more so many individuals 24 hours. I altered title out of myYearbook, a social media to possess appointment new-people, so you can MeetMe.

Whenever i already been myYearbook within the high-school using my brothers, the name thought proper. However, our very own solution and exactly how someone used it easily made title obsolete, while we gradually narrowed our desire to just one procedure: fulfilling new people. All of our provider came into existence the new lso are-creativeness of the club, a digital coffeehouse, a dinner party put, but the identity revealed a senior school reunion. It had been no wonder we was in fact tend to confused with Classmates by the all of our key audience – people who had not joined united states but really.

Immediately following past year’s merger with the Quepasa Agency, i realized we’d the perfect possible opportunity to choose a name that really fit, and in the procedure perform just one around the world brand getting meeting new people. Just after a great painstaking procedure for ideation, internal and external surveying during the numerous dialects, image development, domain acquisition of meetme and you will , Twitter-deal with acquisition of to stop a cooking pot-smoking Elmo incident, protecting the latest ticker See into the NYSE AMEX, and you can cautious mouse click-using rates testing – let alone one late night in the office that have a beneficial Ouija panel and you will a rabbit’s-foot – i settled toward MeetMe.

You will find one condition: we had zero template to have creating a good rebrand correct – just nightmare tales of accomplishing it wrong. When NBCUniversal’s Sci-Fi Station altered the label to a slang title having syphilis, it had been ridiculed. When Netflix announced they were modifying its Dvd-by-mail services so you can Qwikster, societal outcry and you can an effective plummeting inventory rates triggered a rapid alter out-of plans. If the icon billion-buck organizations constantly damage rebrands so terribly, how would we hope to track down as a result of ours unharmed – particularly that have an allegedly volatile public people.

But really that’s exactly what i performed. Almost a month after the rebrand, an important calculating sticks i used to assess associate acquisition and you may involvement have the ability to existed regular, otherwise increased.

I took place it road half of-hoping to eliminate to twice-digit proportions of our affiliate ft; instead all of our audience expanded

Right away, i reached the fresh rebrand around no delusion that our users would approve of your own changes. What we should had been starting are significantly unpopular, therefore know it. One to insights coloured all the choice i made. Regardless of if studies shown the members overwhelmingly found myYearbook to meet up new militaire dating sites gratis people, they still greatly liked the name “myYearbook” – whatsoever, this is the service it chose to register!

We knew the brand new bet were highest, however, we were in reality astonished one in other studies just 17% told you they’d never join once more when we changed our term so you’re able to MeetMe. Some have checked-out an identical investigation and thought twice regarding rebranding after all, however, we had been pretty happy it wasn’t 80% and make which claim. We assumed most of the individuals who made instance a claim would in fact hang in there, as his or her members of the family and you may community are right here. We just needed seriously to make sure that we don’t incite a riot otherwise an anger who ignite a keen exodus.