To me, this is an example of a company, Entercom, spending millions of dollars to a consulting firm to help them rebrand to something “new” and “exciting” that would appeal to a younger generation that is streaming music and podcasts through their phones and computers. That consulting firm came up with this amazing pie in the sky name, but failed to look at the practicality of this new name on the average consumer, for a broadcast medium that is strictly AUDIO ONLY.
Like I said before, the fact that my computer wants to spell check Audacy to Audacity speaks volumes to the practicality issues with this rebrand. Also, the very fact that they have created a new word that has no lexicon in the English dictionary is an issue because when you hear an audio only medium like radio say “Audacy,” you are actually hearing “Odyssey” and when a consumer goes to search for Odyssey online or in the App Store, they are not going to find the Audacy app and this will lead to frustration and invariably less people downloading their app. This would be different if radio were a visual platform where people could see the new name, like the new logo and remember it going forward. But this is RADIO. Everyone knew how to spell “Radio.com” and that was easy to find. Say what you will about Clear Channel rebranding as IHeartRadio, but when you hear “the IHeartRadio app” you immediately know what that is and how to spell it. And IHeartRadio, even with the word “Radio” in their name, has had no issue differentiating their radio business from their podcasting business and have been very successful with it. They are #1 for podcasting.
So, all in all, this rebranding looks like a company making a change just for the purposes of change. If Entercom wanted to rebrand with a new name and keep the Radio.com app, that would have made perfect sense. Or, change your name to something that is actually a real word in the dictionary that people can easily search when they hear it on an AUDIO ONLY BROADCASTING MEDIUM!
Like I said before, the fact that my computer wants to spell check Audacy to Audacity speaks volumes to the practicality issues with this rebrand. Also, the very fact that they have created a new word that has no lexicon in the English dictionary is an issue because when you hear an audio only medium like radio say “Audacy,” you are actually hearing “Odyssey” and when a consumer goes to search for Odyssey online or in the App Store, they are not going to find the Audacy app and this will lead to frustration and invariably less people downloading their app. This would be different if radio were a visual platform where people could see the new name, like the new logo and remember it going forward. But this is RADIO. Everyone knew how to spell “Radio.com” and that was easy to find. Say what you will about Clear Channel rebranding as IHeartRadio, but when you hear “the IHeartRadio app” you immediately know what that is and how to spell it. And IHeartRadio, even with the word “Radio” in their name, has had no issue differentiating their radio business from their podcasting business and have been very successful with it. They are #1 for podcasting.
So, all in all, this rebranding looks like a company making a change just for the purposes of change. If Entercom wanted to rebrand with a new name and keep the Radio.com app, that would have made perfect sense. Or, change your name to something that is actually a real word in the dictionary that people can easily search when they hear it on an AUDIO ONLY BROADCASTING MEDIUM!
