Trends I Don’t Get: Making Your Name More Trendy

Here at Faith & Geekery we’re not growing fast enough. Sure the name is selling, but we could do better. Consultants are telling us that “Geekery” will be fading within 5 years, and “Faith” comes up as a negative word in this post-modern society where certainty is a bad thing. We are considering, not so much a name change, but a re-imaging of the brand. Names we are considering include:

• Geekery and Faith
• fG
• Beliefs and Potential Interests of a Person Inclined to Technology and Speculative Fiction.
• The FaGe Page
  
• F8h & l33t

If this seems a little much, you’re right.  But it’s just following the trend of others changing their name to something a little more fashionable:

RadioShack Corp. is ditching the corporate brand name in its advertisements to appeal to consumers through a more personalized marketing approach that simply uses the phrase “The Shack” to identify the company and its chain of electronic retail stores.

This might not be so bad as an isolated incident, since currents nicknames for Radio Shack include “Rat Shack” or “That Place That Still Sells VCRs for Over $50.” But “The Shack” is following the same trend as other businesses, such as The Hut.

“We’re in the middle of the transformation of the Pizza Hut brand, both in terms of how our store looks and creating a different consumer experience we’re calling The Hut,” said Bob Kraut, vp of marketing for Pizza Hut.

The rationale for both of them is that they have outlived their previous titles: Radio Shack no longer deals with just radios, and radio isn’t exactly the cutting-edge technology that internet and computer technology is (even if they all use radio technology to get their wireless technology across). And now Pizza Hut has something called “WingStreet” that sells Buffalo Chicken.

And as Goose mentioned awhile back, the SciFi Channel is now SyFy (which I assume is pronounced “Siffy” on the air), which may or may not have anything to do with trying to justify professional wrestling on a network dedicated to shows like Battlestar Galactica and Stargate. Since I live in Minnesota, ground zero for the gigantic Target Corporation, I’ve noticed they also seem to be in the business of trendy name changes.  Depending on where you go, you can find plain old Target stores, Target Greatland stores, and the SuperTarget variety.  The difference? A “SuperTarget” has a grocery section, and even though I did inventory at Targets for a year I still have no idea of the difference between Greatland and normal Targets except for the size.

This is one of those times that I have to admit not getting marketing as much as others. I recently saw a bag of chips in the store that had the line “Coming Soon: A Whole New Look for Your Favorite Snack!” They were advertising that they were changing the outside appearance. I guess my mind was supposed to say Oh thanks, I was worried for a second that a new bag was going to mean the contents were totally different inside – and you’re right this is my favorite snack! I think the name was the same, but since I saw them at Target everything is up for grabs.

Most of these I laugh off, but there is one out there that actually kind of bothers me — the trend of Christians desperately wanting to shake off the name the faith has had for centuries because of how some act. This video has a few years on it, but it still gets to the main assertions: Christians are law-obsessed, paranoid, graceless, judgmental, and worst of all — terminally unhip. Who wants to be that? “Christ-Followers” on the other hand, are cool, calm, collected, non-judgmental and have a great answer to everything. Which person would you rather be?

The problem I have isn’t that we know Christians can be clueless at times — we all know this. It’s the idea that by changing a name we’re going to be different people with problems solved and then people will like us. I doubt that Radio Shack’s past problems are going to be solved with a new name, and Pizza Hut’s onslaught of competition over the last two decades is probably not going to change just because they’re now called “The Hut.” Those of us in radio know which stations in the market are going to put out a marketing blitz and create hype — all for a minor change no one really cares about. If you repackage yourself into a new identity, don’t be too surprised if all of the former unresolved issues are still sitting there after the novelty dies down.

And if that’s what it’s about, it’s probably a fine point we Christians may tend to forget: we’re not in the marketing game, especially as it pertains to ourselves. We point to Christ; we don’t point away from “those people.” The ancient Christians had people thinking they were cannibals and supporting immorality. Nero told people they tried to burn down Rome, and I seriously doubt most accusations aimed at the church today can equal that. Besides, it goes against what Paul — in the thick of some of the wild accusations — told his readers to do: accept that we may be wronged at some point and people will think badly of us. Sometimes that’s going to be justified, and sometimes not. But I don’t think changing our name is going to do too much to impress Jesus on those around us.