{"id":27748,"date":"2014-10-03T19:03:05","date_gmt":"2014-10-03T11:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=27748"},"modified":"2014-10-03T18:06:25","modified_gmt":"2014-10-03T10:06:25","slug":"businesses-with-the-name-isis-battle-bad-image-cast-by-islamic-militant-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/10\/03\/businesses-with-the-name-isis-battle-bad-image-cast-by-islamic-militant-group\/","title":{"rendered":"Businesses with the name \u2018Isis\u2019 battle bad image cast by Islamic militant group"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The goddess Isis, wall painting, c. 1360 BCE.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aeran Brent is tired of visitors asking about her store\u2019s name or snapping pictures of the sign outside.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, that\u2019s life for a small business owner whose shop\u2014Isis Bridal and Formal\u2014shares a name with ISIS, the acronym of a notorious Islamic militant group that the United States is fighting in Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just like, \u2018Come on!\u201d\u2018 she says. \u201cI get what\u2019s going on, but can you see it\u2019s a store?\u201d<\/p>\n

Brent denies any connection with the other ISIS, which stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and says she wants to rename her store.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsis\u201d is part of more than 270 product, service or business names among active federal trademarks, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. But businesses are not required to register their names, so it is difficult to say how many companies use \u201cIsis,\u201d which is also the name of an Egyptian and pagan goddess.<\/p>\n

For those companies, the \u201cIsis\u201d name can be damaging. Branding experts say an unfortunate association with a name can scar a company\u2019s reputation even if the connection is coincidental.<\/p>\n

Take Isis Collections Inc., a New Jersey company that makes weaves, wigs and hair pieces. CEO Phillip Shin says stores have told him that customers will put his company\u2019s products back on the shelf after noticing the Isis label. In the United Kingdom, he\u2019s heard that competitors have joked at trade shows about his business being tied to terrorists.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so stressful,\u201d Shin says, noting that he has spent 20 years building the company\u2019s reputation. \u201cI\u2019ve lost all the benefit of the brand image.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shin, who named his company after the Egyptian goddess, started removing the Isis label from some packages. But he\u2019s reluctant to give up on such an established brand. He says he wishes the U.S. and European media would stop referring to the militant group as ISIS.<\/p>\n

Isis Collections has had no sales problems in South Korea, where the media only refers to the group as the Islamic State.<\/p>\n

Another company, technology startup Isis Wallet, announced in September that it would change its name to Softcard. The joint venture involving AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless launched late last year with an app that allows people to use their smartphones while checking out at a store to get discounts and use credit or loyalty cards.<\/p>\n

By June, company leaders were thinking about rebranding to avoid confusion with the militant group, which had taken over large swaths of Iraq and later filmed the beheadings of some U.S. journalists and a British aid worker.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever coincidental, we have no desire to share a name with this group, and our hearts go out to those affected by this violence,\u201d CEO Michael Abbott said in a Sept. 3 blog post announcing the new name.<\/p>\n

Softcard, which also picked its original name to reflect the Egyptian goddess, partners with major companies like American Express. The startup\u2019s executives were worried about asking those partners to continue promoting a product named Isis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to put anybody in a bad situation,\u201d says Cie Nicholson, senior vice-president of marketing.<\/p>\n

Changing a brand or an established company name can be a costly and complex move. Just finding a memorable name can be hard because the best ideas are often taken or trademarked, says Allen Adamson, managing director of the branding firm Landor Associates.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just have a pizza lunch and quickly come up with an alternative,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Softcard\u2019s name change makes sense to Joseph Lewis, a partner with the law firm of Barnes & Thornburg who specializes in trademarks. He noted that the company is new and still building its image. With the old name, they would have had to take the extra step of explaining that they weren\u2019t tied to the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrands are owned by companies, but it\u2019s all in the public\u2019s mind and you can only control so much,\u201d he says. \u201cThey can control how it is presented, but they can\u2019t always control how it\u2019s perceived.\u201d<\/p>\n

More established brands that don\u2019t deal directly with consumers may not take as much of a hit. Isis Pharmaceuticals Inc. has no plans to change a brand it has built over 25 years. The California company develops drugs and then partners with other companies to sell them.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t sell products directly to consumers, and its name doesn\u2019t even appear on any of the products it helped develop.<\/p>\n

So far, only a few investors have asked company officials about the name.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been around for a while,\u201d says D. Wade Walke, vice-president of corporate communications. \u201cThey can easily distinguish between us and a Middle Eastern terrorist group.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aeran Brent is tired of visitors asking about her store\u2019s name or snapping pictures of the sign outside. Unfortunately, that\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":27749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","mauthors-tom-murphy","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}