Sy Fy: The Latest Mess From Another Stupid Branding Company
On Tuesday morning, the Sci Fi channel became Sy Fy, which you can be assured will be back as Sci Fi not long after that. Just about everyone who has heard about this wondered "What branding company is sleeping with who over there?" You cannot pretend to like this moniker. There are reasons for this change--and none make sense. I don't know why they did it, but as one who's watched thousands of companies make change for no reason, here are some guesses:
1. They needed a slogan and they'd run out of creativity (the New York Times called their new name an experimental laxative; that's pretty creative). Sci Fi conjured up the gag "Imagine Greater" because they want to be like Apple ("Think Different"). With a mindless slogan on their hands, they used sleight of hand and imagined a greater-than-dumb trademark name for the network so people would mock it rather than their ludicrous tagline.
2. Just like Headline News is now HLN, Learning Channel became TLC, American Movie Classics fell into AMC, Game Show Network calls itself GSN, or Outdoor Channel morphed into VS., it's bad form now to have more than a few letters in your name. Sy Fy is fewer than Sci Fi. The History Channel even changed to just History last year; it would have been THC were it not been for similarities to the ingredient in pot. OXYGEN would have been OXY yet it sounds like oxycodone and better still, Bill Mays owns the prefix outright! This massive shortening routine got even more bizarre when E! Channel's E! True Hollywood Story is now tossed off as THS!
Then there is truTV, which is Court TV's newish name. Weird. I just found out it has no content from the late Truman Capote. As for Spike, does Spike Lee know that it will be Spi soon?
3. Change is not good all the time; people get antsy all the time. Sci Fi wants to program more than science-fiction shows. So, like Grandma used to say: Nu? There are subtle ways to manage this--for instance tell people, "We're still Sci Fi but we have expanded into newer dimensions!" The concept of expansion without screaming is foreign to corporate monoliths (Sy part of the NBC Universal "family").
4. A branding company sauntered in and told the suits it's time to grow with the times. That happens a lot, and quite needlessly. Slick branders speak a hi-toned language to make Senior VPs, all of whom are worried about their jobs, go "Man we gotta do this now!" I harken back to truTV, which has fared horribly since the change. You don't know this because no one watches it--tru is a trailer trash version of reality TV. Or, as they pointed out: it's "Not Reality. It's Actuality." Both of these networks think its audience is the lowest of common denominators. And oh yeah, the former Court TV laid off over 150 people last week. That, my friends, is tru(e).
5. Sy Sims is funding the rebrand. That explains Sy. As for the Fy suffix, one of the Sci Fi chiefs was in the military and doesn't know how to spell Semper Fi. That's all I got.
I told my closest pal about Sy Fy and he said he wished he could have been in the room when the decision was made. Since he's not in marketing, I wondered why. "So I could have seen the look on the faces of people who heard the top person say 'Great idea'."
Just because someone wants to do something 'different' or 'greater than' what existed before, you could in fact be the sane person at your company and step in with the loudest voice on record and suggest that aybe we should reconsider. Or better yet: "Do we need to change this much?" Even if the business isn't skyrocketing this second, there is that one reality: a brand that's known the world over!
Or remind the doofuses how far orange icon Tropicana fell after tossing a well-loved carton design away early this year, after which it lost valuable market share. When asked why 2009 was a downer, a spokesperson pointed to the change of carton: "Draw a line from there."
Once again, it doesn't take anyone's help to make you look stupid.
Follow Richard Laermer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/laermer
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I don't see anyone stating the obvious so I will.
Sci Fi = Science Fiction
Sy Fy = ??????
If anyone is a stickler for proper representation and a disdain for cutesy misrepresentation its the Science Fiction geek. Way to slap it to your main audience S..... Its so stupid I can't even write it.
Perhaps it's a response to all the recent home schooling in this kontry.
The change was announced some time ago. The ad company currently working with the network was quick to go on record saying the decision to use "SyFy" was internal to the network and not something the ad company recommended. So, I have to wonder why you're speculating on something that was explained publicly some time ago.
Why don't they call it what it really is..."The too many loud cheesy commericial bad programming channel"..
It is a terrible station. The made for Sci Fi movies are so badly filmed with cheesy special effects you would think that you are watching a comedy.
They can slap whatever label they want on the channel, but people will tune in (or not) based on the programming. Which, in Sci-Fi's case, ranks right up there with TruTV and Spike. Even their broadcast of classic shows such as Twilight Zone are cut, overlayed, squished etc to the point where it's horribly irritating and not worth the bother.
And as for their original programming, I wonder how many viewers have ever actually listened to the dialog. It's as if it was written by a 7th grader.
After an executive reaches a certain pay grade he justifies his existance with "bright ideas". Many a good product has been ruined by some upper-mid level executive trying to make a reputation for himself.
I had read somewhere that they were changing the name to appeal more to women. I have no idea why that would be seeing as.. you know... women can spell too. I agree that the moniker won't last long.
And I do fear that our children (I don't have any myself) will not be able to spell between texting and whatnot. This kind of thing doesn't help.
Maybe the appeal to women is supposed to be Feudian - you know, those hanging descenders on the y's. I'm not kidding, I used to work at an ad agency, you'd be surprised how their col ective little minds work.
As a woman, I find the new name just as stupid as you men do. Also, if they want to appeal more to women, they should occasionally make one of their "original" movies without close-ups of severed heads, bodies cut in half, etc. Yuck! And in addition, all those dumb "ghost-hunters" shows are even stupider than the new name.
As long as they don't take my moniker...
A rose by any other name still has thorns.
Not pretend to like it? It's no worse than 'sci fi'.
The channel's name is already horrible; I don't blame them a bit for wanting something else. In their shoes I'd be doing the same. The real problem with sy fy is that it's nearly enough of an 'else'!
Personally, I looked forward to Stargate Atlantis every week (after getting used to the loss of SG-1). The stories were mostly good, and the cast was terrific. Sci-Fi cancelled it. I love Eureka, and the Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters International. Also liked Battlestar Galactica. I have hopes for Warehouse 13....cour
Their movies SUCK big time..and I mean BIG TIME! I could care less about Sci-Fi vs. SyFy. It's a wait and see.
It's not about the name.
It's about the content.
I never get worked up over a name change unless the content sucked in the first place. The content on SyFy (or Sci Fi or Skiffee or whateverthehellelse you wanna call it) generally doesn't suck (sure, there's some really stupid stuff on it, like, occassionally the UFC and the latest creature feature). Otherwise, so what?
I remember, back in the '70s when people got their panties in a bunch when the MPAA change the GP rating to PG. My point is: whenever there is change someone's gotta complain.
There is one reason for the rename. It's a very good reason, and it's the reason behind nearly every rename and rebrand of recent years. It's so obvious, it should shout out to everyone here. You shouldn't even need to think about it. It can be summed up in one word. Google.
Google "Sci Fi" and you'll get festivals, books, toys, Wikipedia, countless other websites, and the latest blockbuster films. You'll get Jules Verne, H.G.Wells, E.E. "Doc" Smith, Brian Aldiss, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Clifford D. Simak, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, James Blish, Philip K. Dick, Larry Niven, Ursula le Guin, William Gibson, Greg Bear and a thousand other names, and information about all their works and derivatives. If you're really lucky, somewhere in there you might find something about the Sci Fi channel.
Google SyFy and you'll find silly articles about how stupid the channel was to rename itself.
Countless great organisations and great bands, some of them very successful in the days before Internet, have gone under because they happened to have generic names. Should SyFy have followed their example?
YES, SyFy should have followed their example, especially when they are in the business of showing said shows that lead to festivals and are from science fiction books and toys and wikipedia. When they stop showing bad H.G. Wells movies then they should feel free to change their name. In fact, half of everything on Syfy came from another channel OR a science fiction author. Not only is it stupid to re-brand the company during a recession (I put the name change on my facebook and most of my friends had no clue the name had been changed!), it's a stupid re-branding. If you are going to go there, at least make sure the re-branding makes sense.
I don't get it. Are you saying that SyFy should have followed the example of organisations that have gone under? That they should have gone under themselves? If so, why do you point people to them on Facebook?
You know about the Sci Fi channel already. You follow them avidly enough to know about the name change, and to point other people towards their new site. But there are many others who know nothing about the channel, or they have heard of it but that's as far as it goes. They see a reference to it on a web page (maybe here, even) or in a magazine article, and they want to find out more. So they Google. They NEED a non-generic word or phrase, one that actually stands a chance of pulling up the site they're searching for.
The long-term fans who don't know about the rebranding don't lose out because when they try to visit the old site they are automatically redirected to the new one.
So when people are looking for Science Fiction, do you think they are going to look for "syfy"?
As a brand, this is worse than New Coke, which at least maintained an element of its original Coke identity.
While I agree that content is king and they've had a few outstanding ideas, thier monster movies and ghost stuff is just plain stupid. They need to decide if they want to appeal to the smart people are the dumb ones.
Maybe they should move the smart programing back to SciFi and leave the stupid stuff on SyFy for people who can't spell it.
At least that idea makes sense.
"So when people are looking for Science Fiction, do you think they are going to look for "syfy"?"
If they see it mentioned in a discussion such as this one, then, yes. Or, if they see a set of program listings for SyFy in a newspaper or magazine and want to know more, then, yes. And the good news is, they'll find it. Very different from the situation prior to now.
Of course, if they don't want the channel, if they just want a dose of science fiction and don't care where it comes from, then they'll search for "science fiction" and they'll get the Wikipedia entry, exactly the same as they used to. And there's just a chance, a minuscule chance, that they'll stumble upon the sci-fi / ScyFy channel. That hasn't changed one iota. After all, ScyFy aren't going to stop using the expressions "science fiction" and "sci fi" in their program listings. What has changed is that people will no longer have to be both persistent and lucky in order to find a site when they know it exists and they even know what it is called
p.s. It's interesting that you refer to the "original Coke identity". Why do you you think Coke is called Coke nowadays, even though its proper name is Coca Cola? Could it be because both Coca and Cola (but especially Cola) are generic words? The same way that "Sci Fi" is generic? Coke needs to distinguish itself from the thousand other colas out there, and the only way to do that is with a trademarked non-generic name.
It's called having time on your hands and trying to justify your salary and existence.
But it's more rampant in business.
It's a slap in the face of geeks everywhere
When I heard about the change, I was skeptical. Did the change mean that we were going to get a better grade of science fiction programs and movies. Probably not. I'm still skeptical.
When I heard that there was going to be a Sci-Fi channel, I was totally ecstatic. Science fiction is my favorite genre and the MAIN reason that I quickly became an adherent of the Sci-Fi Channel. Sure, it was a little schlocky at first, but it was new and one-of-a-kind and I kind of half assumed that the programming would get bigger and better as time flew by. I was wrong to a certain degree, but I still watched. Now, with the news that they may change their programming to include something other than science fiction, I'm starting to feel as if I'm about to jump ship. Mostly because if SyFy truly believed that they could pass off fake wrestling as science fiction and still retain it's viewers and now they've decided to add other types of non-science fiction programs, I'm positive that I'll not be a loyal viewer for very much longer.
Yes, I was most displeased by the ECW stuff. I know wrestling is a ratings getter, but it seems a might stretch to have it on Sci Fi or Syfy or whatever it is.
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