During last week's interview with Maurice Saatchi in Stratégies, I was amused by his somewhat ingenuous reply to a question about the potential confusion between his current agency - M&C Saatchi - and the one he left many years ago, Saatchi & Saatchi. "Do you really think people are confused?" he asked. Maybe not in the advertising industry - but probably just about everywhere else. I can't help thinking it was a slight error of branding. Imagine Burger King calling itself McBurger. Or Ryan Air naming itself Lazy Jet.
Having said that, I've always thought advertising agencies are hopeless at their own branding. I first started writing about the industry in the 1990s. Imagine my dismay when I was confronted with BBH, DDB, DMB&B and BBDO. Not to mention Duckworth Finn Grubb Waters. Then there were the media agencies: Mediacom, Media Edge and Optimum Media Direction. But at least they had an excuse - they weren't creative.
With the internet came the "weird name" era: Razorfish, Strawberry Frog, Mother and Naked. The earlier generation of agencies were named after their founders (McCann Erickson and so on) because they wanted to sound professional, like lawyers. They also took themselves seriously. Which is why the fictional Sterling Cooper Draper Price is spot on. Don Draper would no doubt rather choke on his dry martini than call his agency Mother.
