What’s In A Name?
After launching Endangered Species Marketing, friends and colleagues were curious about the story behind the name. Here is exactly what I tell them:
First, I truly believe that great marketing is at risk:
1) Companies are increasingly run as short-term concerns, under scrutiny to maximize every single dollar of spending. As both art and science, marketing is a significant expense and an element of the budget without cost surety. To reduce their risk, companies have begun prioritizing the measurable "science" of marketing over the art.
2) The proliferation of 1:1 marketing is incredibly labor-intensive. Marketing departments are stretched thin and tasked to create a large volume of consumer-facing messaging that reaches ever smaller audiences. The result often becomes quantity over quality.
3) The large volume of tactics and emphasis on the science of marketing - test and learn, analytics and optimization - results in marketing departments drowning in data. With so much data, and pressure to create ever more content, there is an inability to see the forest for the trees.
4) With the average tenure of CMOs between 2-4 years, the result becomes different marketing philosophies, followed by different agencies and sometimes even internal teams. While occasionally these changes can result in a successful brand reset, often the result is ever more churn.
(Editor’s Note: your results may vary)
I also chose the name “Endangered Species” because, when I left my role as Senior Director of Marketing & Communications at Baskin-Robbins and began looking for senior marketing roles, I quickly discovered that being over 50 in marketing made me an endangered species. While marketing has made huge, positive advances giving women and PoC access to senior roles (yay!), there is also rampant ageism. Traditional marketing experience has been devalued and replaced with the desire for Millennial “digital natives.” The new name was a nod to the status of every marketer over the age of 50 out there being told by recruiters and hiring managers we should remove our job experience to “look less old.”
Last, “Endangered Species” was born out of my desire to give back. As I began to consider my career alternatives, I realized being part of something that was making the world better needed to be part of my mission. This consultancy allows me to do both – to devote some of my time to helping non-profits be better marketers and to also earn money to donate to a charitable organization whose mission is to help protect and preserve endangered species, the World Wildlife Fund.
If you’re thinking about a name, whether it’s for a business or a product, keep in mind the following: a name should be easy to pronounce and spell, it should be something that’s not being used by competitors (or easily confused with same) and doesn’t have any unintended meanings. MOST IMPORTANTLY, a name should be memorable and have a good story.