Our President. The Great Renamer.

I spent over 25 years in Brand Management. One of the realities of hiring a new brand manager is the first thing he/she will do is change the packaging of the product. It doesn’t matter if the product is successful or not. In some ways, this is similar to a dog or cat marking its territory by pissing on something. The brand manager wants the world to know “This is mine. I did this.”

Our President has a special attraction to renaming things. It started early on when he gave nicknames to people he was campaigning against (e.g., “Crooked Hillary” and “Sleepy Joe Biden”). Here is a compilation of those nicknames (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nicknames_used_by_Donald_Trump ).

But when he became President again, he took his game to the next level.

The biggest name change was renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. But he has not stopped there. Recently he decided he would rename Veterans Day “Victory Day for World War I.” He would also label May 8, known as V-E Day for Victory in Europe, as “Victory Day for World War II,” and vowed to celebrate America’s military wins.

President Trump has seized upon renaming to push forward his view of the world. In some ways, he’s the ultimate marketer. But marketing is not just one-off things like renaming.

As a professional name developer, I too rename a lot of things. But when I do it, I build a name based on solid principles that are based on the strategic foundation of the brand.

I’m not sure “The Great Renamer” can demonstrate the solid strategic principles behind his actions, but I will acknowledge that they make for great headlines!