What is guiding branding in 2024 and what does successful branding look like? TFL routinely covers how companies are gaining traction among consumers when it comes to their brands and also how trends in branding are evolving over time: most recently, we dove into the rise of quiet logos (which follows from quiet luxury) – and you may recall the onset of blanding several years ago. Against that background, we wanted to dive deeper and consider what successful branding looks like from a different angle. As a result of the proprietary business data sets that we have compiled and continue to update on a daily basis, we look at a significant number of transactions, namely, funding rounds and merger-and-acquisitions.
With that in mind, we parsed the details of M&A and other investment transactions – upwards of 2,000 transactions across industries (from fashion and retail to auto, pharma, AI, ESG, etc.) that took place from September 1, 2024 to November 20, 2024 – to see what trends in branding we could identify. A few recurring themes stood out that may be particularly useful for those looking to launch new brands, sub-brands, or even branded products …
Branding: Vowel-Less (or Largely Vowel-Less) Marks
A few years ago, British asset manager Standard Life Aberdeen made headlines when it revealed that it would change the spelling of its name from Aberdeen to ABRDN, “abandoning the letter ‘e’ in phone-text fashion as part of a plan to modernize its brand,” Reuters reported. As TFL noted at the time, ABRDN was hardly the only company to either revamp existing branding or introduce new branding altogether that did away with vowels. The rise of companies with names like Kassl, SVNR (pronounced souvenir), SLVRLAKE, YSTRDYS TMRRW, VTMNTS, and GFT appeared to be a reflection of the fact that the number of brand names and corresponding social media handles, domain names, etc., are somewhat finite, or as some have argued, are potentially running out.
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