The Shack goes the way of The Hut
So while Pizza Hut is starting to call themselves The Hut, Radio Shack is now toying with the idea of The Shack. Is it just me, or is this slowly starting to spiral out of control? Let’s take bets on when Burger King becomes The King, Wal-Mart becomes The Mart and Safeway and Subway are deadlocked in a legal battle for The Way. I know times are tight, but contrary to popular belief, cutting your name in half won’t save you any money.
To me, this whole shortening thing is a way for companies to try to distance themselves from, well… themselves. They’re becoming less descriptive about who they are in an attempt to camouflage themselves into people’s vocabularies and lives. When you say you’re going to Radio Shack, you’re going to a company to buy something. When you say you’re going to The Shack, it sounds like you could be going to any number of ubiquitous yet unique locations. The problem is, you’re still going to a large international corporation and everyone knows it. While the name might sound cute and local, the experience certainly won’t be, and this will create a disconnect.
While the concept of blending in and commodifying your company might sound good in theory, it’s actually very hard to pull off. (I doubt Chap-Stick and Xerox did it on purpose.) For The Shack and The Hut, it comes down to the difference between what they say and what they do. Nothing about Radio Shack feels like a shack and nothing about Pizza Hut feels like a hut. There’s too much plastic and cheap carpet. Let’s not forget that huts and shacks aren’t that cool anyway. Of all places to get a pizza, would you go to a hut? No. If you were looking for a flux capacitor or some other little electronic gizmo, is that something you think you’d find in a shack? No f’ing way.
As far as Radio Shack is concerned, if I had to pick one word to play with, it would be radio, not shack. Radio is a great word. Yea, I know, people don’t listen to the radio anymore–but that’s what makes it cool. It’s just the type of thing that the electronic tinkerers who end up in Radio Shack would appreciate. Anyway, since when does trying to sound younger appeal to young people? Trying to be younger is, like, something old people do.
Along with Pizza Hut and Radio Shack, Starbucks is also trying to distance themselves from themselves with new locations in Seattle that attempt to recreate a local coffeehouse experience. While Starbucks is smart enough to change the experience along with the name, why are all these companies suddenly afraid of their own shadows? If people turn on your brand, the answer shouldn’t be to try and recreate yourself in the eyes of people who don’t like you. They’re probably really skeptical and hard to please anyway. You think people who hate Starbucks will be happy when the find out that 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea is actually a Starbucks in disguise? They’ll probably spray their macchiato all over the floor. Of course there are the people who won’t figure out they’re in a Starbucks, but these are probably people who don’t care and probably go to Starbucks anyway.
Instead of trying to change who you are by chasing research reports and the telemarketed people in them, you’re probably better served working on the core of who you are—you know, the things that made you successful in the first place. Sure, times change and you need to keep up. But these experiments seem like sheepish attempts at chasing long-gone customers that, in the end, will detract from these companies’ brands and bottom lines.
