“Fix it Again, Tony”
What a consumer nickname says about a brand
A Q&A with Zhe Zhang, Assistant Professor of Marketing at HEC Montréal.
We have all heard friends discuss the latest deal they found at “Tar-zhay,” or a Subaru enthusiast boast about how much she loves her “Subie.” These pet names for brands mean more than one might think.
A recent article published in the Journal of Marketing demonstrates how consumer-inspired nicknames can confer credibility on a brand. I discussed the research with one of the authors, Dr. Zhe Zhang, Assistant Professor of Marketing at HEC Montréal.
JF: Please tell me a little bit about how a nickname provides a brand with street cred among consumers.
ZZ: A brand nickname is consumer-based language not coming from the brand; it’s coming from the consumers. In this research, we found that when a consumer uses a brand nickname to refer to a brand in online communication, it makes the information provided from the consumer be perceived as more authentic. Because when that consumer is using a nickname to refer to the brand, it says that the consumer has a relationship with the brand.
For example, everybody knows McDonald’s. So, we all can say McDonald’s, but not everybody is going to use Mickey D’s to refer to McDonald’s. The fact that I say Mickey D’s in a spontaneous way when I’m writing a review about McDonald’s shows that I actually have a relationship with the brand. So this is where the credibility is coming from, and that makes the information appear more authentic.
JF: Is that similar to how it works with people? So, if I would call somebody Bob, it may suggest a little bit of a different relationship than if I called them Robert.
ZZ: You’re absolutely right. Human nicknames have been investigated in the literature before, mostly in social psychology. Whereas interestingly, for brand nicknames, pretty much no research has done before. So, other people would see you referring to Robert as Bob, but they still call him Robert, so that means you actually have a closer relationship with Bob.
JF: Interestingly, your research suggests the effect is not the same if brands refer to themselves using nicknames. Why is that?
ZZ: The street cred of a brand nickname comes from the fact that it is consumer language. So, we suggest that companies should avoid stealing this consumer language from them, because when the company or the brand itself is using the nickname to refer to itself, it may actually activate consumers’ persuasion knowledge.
As a consumer, we always know that companies are trying to sell us things. If McDonald’s launches a campaign that says, “Come to Mickey D’s,” it may make consumers think that the company is intentionally trying to adopt consumers’ language in order to make a transaction happen, and trying to steal what the consumer says to reach their marketing objectives. So, it may be perceived as less authentic.
JF: So, translating it to a human level, it is like if you have to tell someone that you’re cool, you’re probably not.
ZZ: Right. In some sense, you can think of it that way.
JF: These nicknames can be very powerful in carrying meaning for a brand. Nevertheless, many brands resist them. Why?
ZZ: Not all brands resist them, but a lot do. Chevrolet used to restrict the popular nickname Chevy. There’s actually a memo from an executive at Chevy. His argument is that most strong brands have very good consistency, whereas a nickname is an inconsistent element in the brand.
Companies and marketers have spent lots of money to build a brand, to design a brand, and a brand name is probably the most important component in the branding process. So, when there is an unofficial name coming from outside of what the company has planned, they would consider that as an inconsistent element to this process. They may think it would dilute the brand or lead to inconsistent brand identities.
And not all the nicknames are positive or neutral. Whole Foods’ nickname is Whole Paycheck. Neiman Marcus is Needless Markup. I think that some companies would be afraid of the spread of those negative nicknames because they may actually hurt the brand image.
But maybe you can use nickname as a good source to find out where there is a problem with your brand. Where do you actually get that negative nickname from? And that’s going to be providing you information to fix the problem instead of just telling people “Hey, stop calling me that.”
JF: Speaking of unflattering nicknames, in the US it used to be said that Fiat stood for, “Fix it Again, Tony.” They left the US market for 10 or 15 years but then when they came back, they reintroduced the brand with a campaign that really embraced that derogatory nickname. Their campaign featured a fictional garage owner named Tony and his message was, basically, “I can’t believe this is a Fiat! I don’t have to fix it!” Do you think that was a successful approach?
ZZ: I think they did it very well. Instead of directly telling people, “Hey, don’t call us Fix it Again, Tony,” they fixed the problem from a fundamental perspective. We know that our product had quality issues, so we have fixed it. Now, give us another try. So, they switched things around. I kind of like taking advantage of the popularity of the nickname to do free marketing. It was a very smart move.
JF: Do you think the relevance of brand nicknames is different today in the digital world than it would have been had you done this research 20 or 30 or 50 years ago?
ZZ: I think it’s going to be more important nowadays. In the 1920s, Coca-Cola used to restrict people from saying the word Coke as a nickname for the brand. They spent lots of money for 30 years to educate consumers to say Coca-Cola. But then they had to give up. But back then it was just about how consumers were going to build a relationship with the brand. Nowadays, a lot of communication happens online, and people can say whatever they want. Everything is online, you can talk to a stranger about brand, so I think it actually becomes more important.
The one big issue that companies are facing today is that consumers start to not believe what they have seen online, because we have seen so many fake reviews on different digital platforms. Sometimes we have a hard time deciding whether the person is telling the truth. Or maybe it’s just a brand trying to promote themselves. So, I think this nickname strategy, or having consumers talk about your nickname, is actually a very good perspective regarding how companies can rely on consumer language to communicate authentic messages in the digital world.
JF: If I’m a CMO reading your article, I start thinking, “Well, I can’t use these nicknames myself, because then they lose their power. So, what do I do with this information?”
ZZ: You’re absolutely right. We don’t recommend you use the nickname yourself. But that doesn’t mean that you should not pay attention to the nicknames. As I said, nicknames are genuine consumer language. So, just by looking at the nicknames, you can get a lot of information. We talked about the negative nicknames and how you can kind of figure out what the issues are with your brand.
Also, brands are constantly monitoring their presence in the digital landscape by looking at like hashtags or ads. A lot of times, maybe they’re monitoring just the hashtags of their brand names, but they should also pay attention to the brand nicknames because, at least based on our research, when consumers are using a nickname to refer to a brand those are actually more authentic thoughts or opinions they’re trying to express. So, if you are Chevrolet, in addition to monitoring the hashtag of Chevrolet, you should also pay attention to the hashtag of Chevy. So if you ignore the nickname hashtag part, you’re going to miss at least 1/3 to 1/2 of your mentions online.
The second thing is that you should respect the users’ habit of calling you by your nickname. So although you cannot use the nicknames directly, you need to adjust your marketing approach by respecting consumers’ language. For instance, I’m not sure about McDonald’s now, but when we were doing this research, if you searched Mickey D’s on Google, the first result returned by the search engine was from Urban Dictionary. That’s not a good thing for the brand because if I’m a customer and I’m searching Mickey D’s online, I’m not there to look for what Mickey D’s means. I’m either looking for a restaurant near me, or I’m looking for coupons that I’m going to use. So, you want to make sure that when consumers are using a nickname, they can find your brand accurately. This also applies to social media as well.
Lastly, even though you cannot directly use the nicknames, that doesn’t mean that you should not protect your nicknames. For example, Beemer is the nickname for BMW. The company actually doesn’t own Beemer.com so if you type in Beemer.com, you’re going to go to a third-party website. This is a very dangerous case for BMW because, first, if they want to repurchase Beemer.com it would be cost more money. Second, say if Chevrolet purchases Beemer.com, they could put comparison ads or promotions on there. So, maybe I was thinking about buying a BMW, but after I visit Beemer.com I saw Chevrolet actually has a better deal, so I’m going to go purchase a Chevrolet.
So, you want to register your nicknames and protect them. You want to make sure that at least you have certain level of control of the nickname.
JF: Do you have a nickname?
ZZ: I do, actually. When I was born, my parents gave me a nickname. My nickname was not generated during social interaction. A lot of brand nicknames are generated during social interactions. But I do think, in this case, my parents give me a nickname to show affection and intimacy.
James Forr is Head of Insights of Olson Zaltman
