Why the BOM’s attempt to rebrand itself as the Bureau was a marketing disaster

The BOM’s rebrand to the Bureau comes at a time of flooding and strong weather warnings across Australia. AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts

Timing is everything. And when it comes to weather, with all the vagrancies and uncertainty, timing is critical.

At least you can control timing.

So who pressed go on announcing the rebrand for the Bureau of Meteorology?

As our newsfeed is filled with images of flood devastation, we’re also hearing of a $220 million rebrand from the weather bureau. If there was ever an “us and them” a “Canberra bubble” or a “fat cat bureaucrat” story, this is it.

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There are always going to be weather events across the country, but in a week where we have seen two deaths and thousands of people displaced by floods, thousands of heads of stock lost, the Bureau of Meteorology has got its timing badly and critically wrong.

There is nothing wrong with a rebrand. There is nothing wrong with using the correct terminology.

Both are important events and tools for any brand. Like anything else though, if the timing and execution are wrong, a rebrand is more damaging than good.

With the BOM scenario, the two big issues are timing and also, why? When BOM is such a great, familiar name with incredible brand recognition.

Weather is deeply personal. My family were farmers. When I first went to work and into politics, I realised that many people didn’t know weather makes or breaks a season, a crop, or a flock. That farming, with all its highs, could be brought low by a day of bad rain, rain at the wrong time, wind at the wrong time.

That a whole enterprise could lose a year’s work, in a few hours of poorly timed rain. I commented just last week about having three WhatsApp text groups — including my family one — that regularly reports weather, and feature daily rain gauge updates. In our home, my husband is a professional sports coach, and almost every day one of us says “Check BOM”.

The BOM does amazing work, it’s a constant to many of us, but today, the organisation feels out of touch and irrelevant.

What’s in a rebrand?

So this rebrand annoucement? Rather than being what is simple and easy and connective — poor timing and a lack of connection have made it into an expensive exercise in importance and ego.

Let’s be clear — there is nothing wrong with BOM. BOM is endearing, it reflects the personal relationships and connections we have with the organisation. It’s part of our culture, isn’t it? We love a nickname and we love a shortening. We love being familiar. It’s a way we connect to something bigger than ourselves, and something we can’t always control.

When my clients are about to make an announcement, a request or a move — I always ask “to what end?”. What do you want to achieve and who needs to hear about it? Ok, do a rebrand, but what do stakeholders need to know, and how are you going to tell them? What’s the tone? What would you like them to do for you? How does it make their life easier? Better? How does this fit in with their own priorities?

Get all of this clear and then press go.  This comes back to who pressed go on yesterday’s request.

You can’t choose your own nickname

The two scenarios I see are:

Scotty from Marketing became one of the most sticky and dismissive ridicules for the former PM, an indication of both how you can’t choose your own nickname, and also how the general public feels about marketing. We don’t want someone “from marketing” or a “consultant” telling us what we call our national weather agency.

The word “Bureau” is one of the hardest words in the English language to spell. It regularly ranks in the top 15 hardest words to spell on a number of published comprehension scales. From a purely practical language, PR, promotion and reputational standpoint, if you want people in the media to speak about your work, you should be making it easy for them to write and spell your name.

In straight branding terms that the webpage is bom.gov.au, and when people say “Let’s check with BOM”, you know what they’re checking. One of the most popular French-speaking series in the past decade was translated into “The Bureau”, so I am expecting Malotru to turn up every time I hear the name “The Bureau”. It’s a good lesson to check popular culture too before any rebranding.

And haven’t we learned from high school that when someone tries to make up their own nickname, it never ends well?

In deep seriousness though, I’m not sandbagging my home, and waiting for an uncertain water rise, at any given time in the next few days. I can be incredulous about the Bureau’s timing. But members of my family are, and they’ve got every right to feel furious about this taxpayer spending and the timing of the announcement.