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Merged Tufts, Harvard health plans to adopt new name based on allusion that makes no sense without an explanation
By adamg on Wed, 06/16/2021 - 2:46pm
Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care announced today that after their merger this fall, they will have a new corporate name: Point32Health.
The two insurers said that their 2.2 million subscribers will not have to try to puzzle out the new name, at least not at first, because it will only be used for the overall enterprise - Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care " will continue to appear in the marketplace for the foreseeable future."
The insurers explained the name for people who don't count orienteering as one of their hobbies:
Inspired by the 32 points on a compass, Point32Health represents the role the organization plays in guiding and empowering its members and making a meaningful impact across the health care industry.
Naturally, executives went out of their way to try to drive home the compass theme. Chief Marketing Officer Richard O’Connor is quoted:
As an organization with deep roots in the New England region, we look forward to continuing to drive innovation and seamlessly connecting our members to all points of the health care continuum.
The statement itself is headlined:
Point32Health Launches to Guide a New Health Care Journey for Communities Across New England
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Comments
I can't wait until these guys are completely irrelevant
The day can't come soon enough.
Amen
Hope they don't kill me before that day.
Huh?
I may know a thing or two about orienteering and I'm not sure what an archaic system of navigation has to do with health insurance, or really any corporate identity.
Yes
The Moland Springs of healthcare.
Yes
Except they have analysts and therapists.
Get It?
It's a Jump-to-Conclusions mat!
Nonsensical
If you have to explain the branding, it's a big fail.
New Era
Now corporations will start naming themselves with AI bots - just like when shelters turn to nerds to help them give temp names to hundreds of guinea pigs and rabbits and cats taken in from hoarding situations.
I mean, hoarding situation, anyone?
How about AfterPie Healthcare or, maybe, Serendipitous Kill?
NYT article on why brand names on Amazon - and drug names - are getting Sofa King weird
No, see, let me explain...
It's like your big joke that no one gets and you have to explain why it's funny.
Fail.
Yes, Nonsensical...
"If you have to explain the branding, it's a big fail."
I've worked with a nonprofit which shall remain nameless here for obvious reasons.
About 10 years ago they made a big point of rebranding and hired one of those high-powered firms that specialize in that field. They also hyped the process with their clients for months in advance, involving them in focus groups, and proclaiming far and wide that the new name would be announced on x date.
As a contractor, I was part of a group that was told the new name a few weeks in advance, after signing numerous confidentiality notices on pain of death.
All of us at that group meeting looked at each other in puzzlement and agreed that the name just didn't work. And so did our clients, once the name was announced publicly. It was a made-up word, a portmanteau, not easily pronounced.
The public announcement came on a Saturday. On Monday a suit for trademark infringement was filed by another business in the same industry with a similar name (and known for being litigious).
Bottom line was that our organization lost the suit and had to rebrand yet again. It was the best thing that ever happened to us, because the new name made perfect sense and wasn't one of those made-up words. And we were already using it for one of our product lines. It was a natural.
I just hope that our organization got a complete refund of all the consulting fees that they paid to the rebranding consultants -- and that the consultants also ended up having to pay the legal fees from the trademark suit.
So yes, if you have to explain the branding, it's a fail.
Verizon
And I thought I hated when Bell Atlantic changed their name to Verizon when they merged with GTE.
At least Verizon made sense.. (Veritas meets Horizon to make Verizon)
telcomm deregulation followed by mergers
just resulted in a much bigger screwing of the consumer, but what else is new.
An even worse telecom branding
One of the Baby Bells out west decided to rename its corporate-networking offerings as !nterprise. Yes, with an exclamation point, but not to represent a clicking sound like in certain African languages.
At the time, I was working at Network World, which actually covered "enterprise" networking, but where the editors made a decision: No way in hell were they ever going to use that name in our stories. And so it became Nterprise to us - and our readers.
Pity the writers
Spare some sympathy for any copywriters or tech writers made to use such garbage names in their work. Some document programs will flag each and every instance of something like !nterprise as an error when running a spell check, requiring manual acceptance of each one, because they won't allow it to be added to the dictionary.
Branding consultants are parasites. Every time one of them victimized a company I was working for, I couldn't help wondering what the huge amounts of money they made off with could have done for the workers. It's appropriate that branding consultants are featured in a story about health insurance, which are even bigger parasites.
The cost for that brainstorming session?
I imagine it was a very costly affair to pay people to sit in a room (or Zoom meeting) thinking of new “branding” that needs quite a bit of explanation. I see it as a failed attempt, personally.
It will make sense when the
It will make sense when the company goes south.
Wowza
The brand "BankBoston" looks like pure genius compared to this.
It makes perfect sense. They
It makes perfect sense. They merged "Bank of Boston" with the lack of a space between the words in BayBank. They kept the lack of a space when they merged in Fleet Bank to become FleetBoston.
Poor BoB
Remember BoB? They killed him. We still have the giant snake, BoA.
MBAs, man...
[shakes head] What are you gonna do? [Shakes head]
I think somebody accidentally
I think somebody accidentally typed their password in the username field.
Hmmmmm...
Hmmmmm...
In Business News....
3M and M&M have merged to form, get this...
Ultradyne Systems
Points 32
Is points 32 a reference to the interest charges on late hospital bills, or is the 32 points of insurance company contacts from which patients will need approval to get life saving procedures deemed urgent by our doctors?
I've never seen a hospital
I've never seen a hospital bill that charged interest or a late fee. It's always been the original amount, increasingly threatening, until they turn it over to collections. What hospitals do this?
Answer
Hospitals that offer you "payment plans".
Building in inefficiency right from the start
Because everyone typing in the company name on a mobile device will have to toggle twice between the letter and number keyboards.
If you're gonna go with a
If you're gonna go with a compass thing, why not call it "Point33Health," which could pair up with the tag line, "A new direction in health care."
It's clearly been too long
It's clearly been too long since I did orienteering in school.
I can think of 16 points on a compass: N, NNW, NW, WNW, W, WSW, SW, SSW, S, SSE, SE, ESE, E, ENE, NE, NNE.
I can think of 36 bearings - if you take one every ten degrees, like an airport runway.
But... "32"? A little help, please!
There's no reason anyone should know this
North
North by East
North Northeast
Northeast by North
Northeast
Northeast by East
East Northeast
East by North
East
East by South
East Southeast
Southeast by East
Southeast
Southeast by South
South Southeast
South by East
South
South by West
South Southwest
Southwest by South
Southwest
Southwest by West
West Southwest
West by South
West
West by North
West Northwest
Northwest by West
Northwest
Northwest by North
North Northwest
North by West
Re: There's no reason anyone should know this
North by Northwest needs to be in there somewhere.
Sorry, typo. The second-to
Sorry, typo. The second-to-last one should be North by Northwest.
Actually, ignore my last
Actually, ignore my last comment.
There's no "North by Northwest" in the 32 compass points.
NNNW, etc. It's not rocket
NNNW, etc. It's not rocket science
I can't afford to have an MRI
I can't afford to have an MRI because Blue Cross only covers $1'000 and I have it through my employer. . Oh how I wish I had MassHealth so I can get that plus also a brand new set of dental implants for nothing. What am I doing wrong?
off the top of my head..
Guidance HealthCare
Sextant Health Solutions
Astrolabe Health Partners
Mainsail Health Systems (if we're sticking with navigation-adjacent that also honors New England traditions without invoking pilgrims)
Last domain name left
https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/dill...
in business news, 3m and m&m
BPDA & BRA, Exxon, etc.
If I remember correctly BRA spent 3/4 million dollars to rebrand themselves. From BRA to BPDA. Real reason? Because BRA was such a soiled name from their high handed treatment of non-developers they figured change the name and the problem goes away.
Exxon, Verizon. What happens when monopolies are opened up (and then reform). What might be the evolutionary names of names of Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Oracle if they were had to let go of their respective monopolies and duopolies?
BRA BPDA
Yes their rebranding is something
BRA went from "bra"
to BDPA..
isn't that a plastic that is harmful to babies?
or is it a new club drug that was derived from BRA
compass
They can use all those old compasses left over from the East Boston Savings Bank / Rockland Trust buyout!
I really love this thread!
And I will share the Verizon tidbit with my friend who started with New England Telephone