Kango to Uptake – How important is your travel buisness name?
Written by Karen BryanI received an email this morning from Kango informing me that they are changing their name to Uptake. The new name is deemed to be more relevant to the business’ aim of gathering, organising and delivering the collective travel wisdom from the internet.
It’s a big step to change your name and I’m sure that Kango must have thought carefully about this. Personally I don’t like the new name as Uptake could be the uptake of absolutely anything. I thought Kango had a lot more relevance to travel and encouraged you to travel in positive ” can go” way.
This all made my think about my own business name “Europe a la Carte“. Does it say what my business does? I chose the name when I started my travel business in 2002. The name was to indicate that you could see Europe on an independent “a la carte” basis rather than the “set menu” approach of a package holiday.
However my business name could be understood as being the name of a catering business as travel is not mentioned. Also “a la carte” does have some connotations of being more expensive which is contrary to my strapline of “authentic travel in Europe on a modest budget”.
I’ve toyed with the idea of changing my business name but haven’t been able to come up with a better replacement. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s difficult to encompass everything in a business name. Some have achieved this, one of the best examples I can think of in the travel industry is TravelRants. the UK travel consumer blog, where you can let off steam about travel related issues.
What’s your opinion on the importance of a travel business name? Do you think Kango is right to change their name to Uptake?
I think to a large extent, names are arbitrary. Nike, McDonald’s, Apple, Pepsi and lots of other have totally non-descriptive in their names. If you think about it, Microsoft is really a generic name. It is just that they became successful, so we do’nt even think about it. Same with Wal-Mart.
A company makes the name, not vice versa.
Yes, Gary, there are a lot of very successful well known businesses with names that have nothing to do with their business activities. However Kango/Uptake must think there’s something in a name if they are bothering to change their name.
While I agree that a company has to make a name for itself by its actions a good, relevant name is important.
I’m not sure, however, why Uptake is any more travel related than Kango. I’m sure if you asked people what sort of company “Uptake” was, travel would not be the first thing that came to mind.
Hi Karen,
Thanks for your thoughts on this!
Naming is always a very difficult, subjective thing. And especially difficult in todays’ extremely crowded, global trademark and domain space.
We made the decision to change because there was the potential for brand confusion going forward with Kango – e.g. Kangol, Kango, Chaago, Kaango, etc. Surprisingly enough, there is virtually NO travel business named anything close to UpTake.
So our challenge is to inhabit the brand with meaning and imagery that creates a sense of “something” even though UpTake doesn’t really have a literal travel meaning. Within travel, we want to stand for connecting people to the word of mouth across the Web so they can make better travel decisions. So UpTake does tie to the “gathering up” of all this opinions and traveler wisdom.
All great points. I think that “Europe a la Carte” is a fine brand name and does strongly suggest “authentic”, “personal”, “unique”, “for the discriminating”, “only what you want”, etc. It does not connote the idea of budget travel, discounts, or deals. It also has the risk of feeling “exclusive” and not “off the beaten path,” which it seems is a big part of your brand. But there are so many other ways to build a brand–design of your site, tagline (of which you already have a great one), imagery, editorial voice–that I wouldn’t bother changing it at this point UNLESS you start focusing outside of Europe.
Anyway, thanks again for your thoughts!! Any advice you have for how we can make UpTake into a powerful travel brand is *very* welcome.
BTW Karen, it looks like in your RSS feed version of this post you originally called us Kangoo! :) There is actually a company called Kangoo:
http://www.kangoojumps.com/
More examples of the confusion around the Kango name! :)
Thanks for your comments Elliot. Yes I did spell Kango wrongly at first. I am a terrible typist and I never seem to spot my own errors.
I’m grateful for your feedback on my business name. We seem to concur that it’s really hard to come up with that perfect name, which exactly describes our business.