THE CABLE PIPELINE

With some 1900 company name changes last year, one would think these re-branding efforts would pay dividends in market share, customer perception, and employee focus in forging a new direction, both in the short and long term.  Does XFINIITY, See (Comcast launches XFINITY), make relevant and pertinent business sense for all stakeholders involved, or can it be viewed as confusing and irrelevant?

These are the questions Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) must answer when making the investment in retraining customers to think in terms of their existing and new products under new brand name.  But there are inherent issues with re-branding which must be addressed to ensure the new name fits with an existing and future targeted customer culture. 

Does the company have these items?

• Multiple Delivery Platforms
• Multiple Types of Users
• Products & Services with Multiple Features
• Future Content Offerings
• Existing Umbrella or Corporate Names

 Can the New Name Pass this Test?

• Will it have an emotional Bond with customer?
• Will the brand name be easily remembered?
• Does the name association reverberate positive or negative?
• Does the new name position the product as intended?
• Can the new name be easily pronounced by customers?
• Will the sound of the new name bond with the customer?

 These are the issues Comcast probably considered when changing its product brand name to XFINITY.  If you take the meaning of the word (affinity), pronounced and spelled similar to XFINITY, the meaning produces associations like:

 How does an Affinity connection relate?

• (A feeling of connection) – “a natural liking for or identification with somebody or something”
• (Connection)-“a similarity or connection between people or things
• (Somebody attractive)-“somebody to whom somebody else is attracted to”

The question remains, will customers have a connection with the XFINITY name?  Is Comcast seeking to merge its products, both existing and new, into a new brand that best describes its future? What else will the company do to enhance the name, such as tying it to new and improved customer service and quality engineering?  Or maybe it wants to distance its products from an old brand name like Comcast, which has been through the ups and downs of customer perceptions.

Although the company parent name will remain Comcast, even with the newly acquired NBC-Universal, all of its products will be marketed under the name XFINITY, including, Digital Video, Broadband, and Telephone. This goes on to include employee uniforms, customer bills, and product related advertising.

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• Comcast says new name Xfinity is a signal of innovation (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Xfinity: New Name for the Same Old Comcast? (technologizer.com)
• Comcast Rebranding as ‘Xfinity’ (philly.com)