Have you ever noticed that work weeks have themes? It’s the topic that is bounced around all week. It’s the buzz…the thing everyone has an opinion about. Our theme this week was changing the 20 year old name of FlagandBanner.com to simply Flag and Banner. The marketing department made a good argument for the change. It went kind of like this: Monster is not Monster.com, although they use to be. Amazon is not Amazon.com although they use to be. Tiffany, Nike, etc… You get the drift.
I open-mindedly considered the change. Change should be my middle name. I love it. But, after considerable thought, I realized that comparing those huge brands to us didn’t make sense. First of all, there is no other entity with the name Monster, Amazon, Tiffany or Nike; but there are a lot of flag companies who have tacked the words ‘Flag and Banner’ onto their names. There is even a flag company called Flag and Banner Company.
I don’t like throwing rank on good employees (bad ones is another story), but as captain, when the ship is veering off course you must step in and man the helm. It’s not personal and it’s not emotional. It’s business.
I know adding the .com is outdated looking. But function over aesthetics. I don’t want our advertising dollars driving people to a search engine, where they can contrast and compare with our competitors. I want our advertising dollars driving our customer directly to our site FLAGANDBANNER.COM, no ambiguity. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
