Yahoo Finance C’mn Abrdn, abndn this clunky new name nonsense
Don’t look weird and make the name easy to write. In planning to call itself Abrdn, Standard Life Aberdeen has broken two golden rules of corporate rebranding. The new name is an awkward blur that is guaranteed to enrage customers’ spell-checking functions.
Stphn Brd, as the asset manager’s chief executive presumably now styles himself, called it “modern, agile and digitally enabled”, but he sounded like a man trying to justify a large bill from the designers to himself. Modern financial firms call themselves things such as Monzo or Revolut, which have a zing about them. In this case, the company had to include a guide to pronunciation. The answer turns out to be Aberdeen, so why bother rinsing out three-quarters of the vowels?
Related: Standard Life Aberdeen to change name to Abrdn
As for the claim to agility, the truth is the opposite. A name that will cause an unfamiliar speaker to pause is clunky. Even Monday, as PwC once wanted to call itself until it succumbed to gales of laughter, was a word. The boast about “digitally enabled” also looks premature as digital technology moves on to voice recognition. What the company means is that domain names for “Aberdeen” in full are taken, which doesn’t qualify as an excuse.
Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management have suffered an identity problem since the misfiring merger of the two Scottish fund managers in 2017, so a desire for something new is understandable. The Standard Life brand went to Phoenix, which bought the life insurance funds, so unification had to be around the Aberdeen name. But the funky text message-style format just jars. Abndn Abrdn and start again.
