If a terrorist group adopts your brand’s name, what do you do?

Reputation management and your brand

Is your company having a reputation management problem; a little social media crisis? Whatever is going on, it’s unlikely you have it as bad as the Betamax of mobile payments has it lately.

Isis, as I had known it before a few weeks ago, is a mobile payment application that utilizes the NFC chip in many smartphones to make retail purchases once you tie your account to credit cards you already have. Probably the only reason I had ever heard of Isis is that Austin, Texas was one of the early places it rolled out and presumably because Verizon (my carrier) owns part of Isis, Verizon preloaded the app on my phone and for a long time blocked its users’ ability to use competing Google Wallet. Although Verizon always denied it was “blocking” Google Wallet.

On vacation with my family last week, however, and out to dinner with friends, all around me had to endure my geeky ponderings on how the company with that purple decal on the window of the restaurant next to the credit card decals must be feeling about the violent militant group currently occupying parts of Iraq and Syria – also named ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Well, today we found out how they’re feeling when Isis announced they’ll be changing their name; not to be confused with the news last week that ISIS in Iraq was also changing its name.

Some have reasoned that because relatively few Americans are paying attention to the crisis in Iraq and because of the obscurity of the mobile payment system at this point, changing the name and all of the costs associated with rebranding might be overkill. However, for a company still trying to grow and gain brand awareness, the uncertainty of the duration and severity of the crisis in Iraq and Syria does pose a real problem.

A cause for pause

Media outlets are still almost universally using the name ISIS to describe the militant group despite their own rebranding efforts, and the mobile payment company has to be asking itself what the value of the name Isis was anyway. It certainly doesn’t describe the service in any way, and it is likely they initially chose the name because it wasn’t associated with much of anything other than an Egyptian Goddess who was basically the Mother Teresa of Egyptian Goddesses. But now they cannot as easily define the word “Isis” in consumer’s minds while competing with a violent movement in the news.

It is unlikely that your company’s name will be adopted by a terrorist group, of course. But the whole scenario might cause you to pause and consider the value and identity of your own brand. What would have to happen for you to decide you had to completely rebrand? And if you are considering the creation of a new product or brand, it is worth taking the time to imagine the most likely potential threats to that brand and what your reaction would be to those threats.