Friday, November 12, 2010

Give us a K....

Waddaya got? So that's it then West Kent College's long awaited name change is K! Well we're all glad that we hung on long enough to witness that aren't we?! The students must have been up all night thinking that one up. Cynicism aside though sometimes the simplest ideas are the best and, after all, what's in a name? At least it wasn't KKK! Now that would have been a PR disaster. When companies are thinking up new names for themselves for their brands it's, more often than not, a case of working out which names they shouldn't or can't use than which they should. The most famous example I've ever heard of is that the French opted not to use Toyota's MR2 car model when it had been highly successful in other countries. Pourqois? Because MR2, when said with a French accent, sounds too much like merde and means something quite different in their lingo! Big companies therefore often use computer generated, none offensive names for their new products. A quick check would have revealed that there is a K Shoes brand, a lager called K and, not forgetting Special K breakfast cereal. If you watched The Apprentice this week then maybe they should have gone for Teach o nators or maybe even Octo Teach to show that they mean business and that they are multi taskers! At the end of the day though it will be how good they are at teaching and coaching their students and staff which ultimately determines how successful K College is not how good their logo looks.... 

4 comments:

Paul Bailey said...

I wonder how much the college paid some poncy firm of consultants to come up with this name? Hopefully not as much as Royal Mail forked out for some other bunch of jokers to come up with the name "Consignia"!

Tonbridge blogger said...

According to this week's Courier report it was the students who came up with K. Maybe they were on the wacKy baKKy at the time!

Anonymous said...

what a stupid name k college
i am an ex student at west kent and a survey was sent to all of us earlier this year about the name change and that name was on it, why couldnt they have just left it as west kent college or they could have called south and west kent college?

Anonymous said...

K also stands for Ketamine, a horse tranqullizer with recreational applications with which the students will no doubt be familiar. Another first for Tonbridge! - the first educational facility to be named after a Class B illegal substance (two years for possession, five for supply).