Sometimes your competitors shape the language of the whole category. And while it’s important to stand out, it’s just as important to stay clear.
When Competitors Set Names
In this tellthetruths video, I talk about the delicate balance between differentiation and confusion—and how getting too clever with your naming can leave people scratching their heads instead of clicking “buy.”
Check out the examples from Twitter and BlueSky, as well as JetBlue and the rest of the airline industry. Then let me know what you think.
This video originally appeared in LinkedIn.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Hi guys, it’s Rebeca with BrandTrue and I want to talk to you about something that’s been on my mind lately, which is when competitors set names that become the norm in a category. And it can be kind of confusing for brands to figure out. Do they lean into that or do they try to make their own mark and use different language?
And two examples of this have popped up recently, which is why I got to thinking about it. The first one is in the last few months, Bluesky, which is a communications app, a social media platform that competes directly with Twitter, now called X. When they just really blew up recently, there’s been a lot of chatter on there about… when you make a message, when you post, what to call it. Because in Twitter it was called a “tweet” and that’s quite lovely language, ties to their name and their little bird logo. It all made a nice language universe, which as a brand strategist who names things, that was very well done. When they changed their name to X, they kept them “tweets.” So if you compete with them, you don’t want to call posts “tweets” because it’s too associated with them. You want to make your own mark. There’s chatter on there about are they “skeets” Because it’s Bluesky? Or do you just say, “we’ll speak English here and call them posts?” Obviously that’s what I advocate. You can tell. But they definitely shouldn’t use “tweets.” It’s too branded and they need to find something that isn’t copying off of a competitor.
On the other hand, you guys send me notes about naming things. It’s wonderful! Don’t ever stop. Somebody sent me a note recently about JetBlue because apparently they decided that calling their frequent flyer program, the language around it, saying “miles” wasn’t differentiated enough for them because all the airlines say “miles.” So they’ve decided that they’ll say “tiles.” It rhymes with miles, but I don’t know what it has to do with flying. What’s more, when you amass miles or tiles, what’s a group of tiles called? A “mosaic.” So they send texts that say, “congratulations so and so… tiles, mosaics,” and this person who sent the note to me said, “I don’t even know what they’re talking about.” I think that as much as in certain situations, like Bluesky and tweets, you need to forge your own path and make sure that you’re not copying someone else. When it’s normal natural language, like “miles” is how you measure distance traveled, I don’t think that it’s necessarily a good idea to try to be branded and forge your own mark. I think it’s confusing and it’s trying too hard. Let me know what you think. Thanks. Bye!
