Oh I cleaned a lot of plates in Memphis
And I pumped a lot of tane down in New Orleans
But I never saw the good side of the city
Until I hitched a ride on a riverboat queen
Anna Mae Bullock was born in Tennessee in 1939, and grew up singing in church as part of a large family. Life would eventually take her to St. Louis, where she would meet Ike Turner, an early pioneer of what became rock and roll.
Meeting Ike Turner elevated and transformed the homegrown Anna Mae Bullock into the artist Tina Turner, at a price of persistent violence, drug abuse, alcoholism, and infidelity, culminating after marrying Ike in 1962.
Tina Turner attempted suicide in 1968, and eight long years after that, after yet another drug-induced altercation in Dallas, Texas, Tina famously left Ike Turner while he was asleep in a hotel room, walking down the street away from him with nothing more than 36 cents and a Mobil gas station credit card.
Tina Turner had this to say, several years later:
“I just took a chance, I said, ‘The way out is through the door’ and while he was on one of his sleeping times, I just left the hotel, went out the kitchen way and down to the freeway.”
“I walked out without anything and had to make it on my own for my family and everyone, so I just went back to work for myself,” she said. “It was very difficult and dangerous because Ike was a violent person and at that point he was on drugs and very insecure. I had no money. I had no place to go.”
In the divorce proceedings that would follow, Tina Turner made the vanguard legal decision to fight to keep and solely possess her stage name, which the judge allowed. As a result, though, Tina Turner received less remuneration from the divorce than she might otherwise would have, and spent the next two years on food stamps, playing small clubs and taking any gig she could find, specifically to repay IRS debt and settlements from lawsuits from canceled “Ike and Tina Turner” gigs.
Tina’s bet on herself, in fighting for the Tina Turner name, would ultimately pay off many times over when her career exploded into international super-stardom.
And in the end, Tina found a new husband who cared for her to such an extent he gave her a kidney in 2017, and with whom she happily lived with until she passed away on May 24 at the age of 83.
Centific is a technology services company consisting of over 4,000 employees across the globe, working to bring data and AI-oriented solutions to a wide variety of clients.
Just prior to appearing at Project Voice 2023 earlier this year, the company had completed a large re-branding endeavor. The company changed its name from “Pactera Edge,” a clunky name partially inherited from a lengthy corporate history dating back decades, to the vibrant and memorable Centific.
“Our internal creative agency facilitated the process, which was entirely employee driven,” Centific SVP Raff Ripoll remarked to me during a recent meeting. “We’re proud of our legacy, which includes customer relationships dating back to the 90’s, and wanted the right name to help carry that forward.”
Ripoll described how the re-branding process originally centered around 25 potential new names for the company, which was reduced down to 3 or 4 names which were then evaluated by the company’s legal team for ability to trademark them in the various global markets in which they operate, along with checking into domain name availability, lack of other companies using the name, and many other considerations.
The entire process took nearly two years.
“The Centific name was the one our employees were most drawn to and believed was most reflective of who we are as a company,” fellow Centific SVP Vasu Sundarababu shared.
“The first four letters, ‘Cent,’ represent the human-centric focus of the organization. For our work within conversational AI, human centricity is the cornerstone of any platform or service, and so our current direction aligns even more.”
“Then, as you look at our work with data science and AI from the other direction, these fields are deeply scientific in nature, and fusing ‘scientific’ into the name helps underscore the focus we bring to solving very specific problems for clients.”
Centific’s rebrand has worked well for the company and its clients. But it got me thinking about how many companies across the conversational AI universe are in need of a rebrand themselves.
Companies often think about rebranding themselves when they feel their brand is out of date or otherwise fails to communicate the value the company brings to its customers.
The arrival of ChatGPT has changed so much, so very quickly, that I would argue every single conversational AI company should ponder whether their customer value proposition is still as clear to the marketplace as perhaps it used to be.
There’s two approaches to branding - have a name and brand that speaks, at least to some degree, to what you offer:
…or boldly have a name, and brand, that doesn’t do this at all.
Conversational AI generally features many more “Targets” than it does “Whole Foods” - businesses with names/branding that provides little insight into whatever it is the company sells:
And I would argue the company that is captivating the world has a name that’s much more descriptive:
So which approach is best?
Conversational AI’s biggest acquisition to date, Nuance (by Microsoft in 2021 for $20 billion), had a name that straddled the line: not very descriptive, but not opaque either.
Centific’s name sits somewhere in the middle as well. While not descriptive, the construction of the word provides guidance on the company’s values.
Conversational AI has thousands of companies at this point all competing for various pieces of market share. Trying to be a Target or Kodak or Twitter - a company with no clear meaning behind the name - will be a hard road without a breakthrough product.
There’s also signal in the action of executing a rebrand, if done well. It signals financial stability and fundamentally sound management - you can’t rebrand a company if the house is on fire - and provides valuable momentum as customers want to be part of what looks like a winner.
What’s in a name?
Turns out, a lot.
To discuss the opportunities, use cases and risks of generative AI in a business context, join us at 2 PM ET, Wednesday, June 7 for a webinar, How Will Generative AI Impact Customer Interactions?
The webinar will feature a Q&A format and include Brett Petersen, Head of Global Operations & Enablement at Inbenta, and Bradley Metrock, CEO at Project Voice and General Partner of Project Voice Capital Partners.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
What is Generative AI and how does it differ from Conversational AI
How is Generative AI being used in core business applications today
What are the limitations of Generative AI
What compliance and safety risks does Generative AI pose to its enterprise users
How does Conversational AI work in an enterprise setting
Webinar registrants will be able to attend the discussion live, as well as will receive audio and video files of the proceedings afterward to replay on demand.