Impact Podcast | Are nicknames good for business?

KANINA BLANCHARD: Exclusive insights, actionable strategies and ideas that ignite change. You're listening to the Ivey Impact Podcast from Ivey Business School.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Hello and welcome to Dialogue with the Dean. The inaugural series on the Ivey Impact Podcast. I'm Julian Birkinshaw, Dean of the Ivey Business School. And in this series, I sit down with Ivey's leading faculty to explore their latest research and tackle the pressing issues shaping business and society. On today's episode, we're exploring a phenomenon we often take for granted: nicknames. From brands like “Beemer” and “Tarjay” to workplace monikers like the Oracle of Omaha. Nicknames create familiarity and connection. But what if they also come with unintended consequences? New research suggests that companies embracing their consumer given nicknames may actually weaken their brand power. And in the workplace, nicknames can subtly reinforce hierarchies in ways we don't always recognize. Joining me today is Zhe Zhang Assistant professor of marketing at Ivey, whose research uncovers why brands should think twice before adopting consumer created nicknames in their marketing. We'll also dive into the surprising effects of workplace nicknames. For instance, why it may be okay for employees to call their boss Panda, but a different story when the boss calls an employee the same name. So, should we embrace nicknames or retire them? Let's find out. Zhe, welcome to Dialogue with the Dean.

ZHE ZHANG: It's s great pleasure. Thank you.

JULIIAN BIRKINSHAW: Thanks. So just before we get into your research, just tell us how you how you got to Ivey. What's your path to Ivey as a faculty member?

ZHE ZHANG: So, I started as a chemist, and my first PhD was actually in chemistry before I started in marketing. And I got to Ivey in 2022, and my research is about branding and marketing communication.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: So, you have two PhDs?

ZHE ZHANG: Yes.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Wow. Okay. That's more than me. So, tell us a little bit about how you got into nicknames. We're going to start with corporate nicknames, and then we'll get to personal nicknames. What was the sort of motivation for that as a, as a phenomenon study.

ZHE ZHANG: So, it all started with my dog's name. His name is Matt, like Matthew. So, I got people asking me all the time, how could you give a dog a human name? And that intrigued me to understand how companies and consumers name brands. And I found those interesting examples that, for McDonald's, they embraced a nickname, a Mackers in Australia. So if you go to Australia, you see Mackers, it's actually McDonald's there. But some companies took the different approach, such as a Chevrolet. The company used to have a no nickname policy that people or employees in the company cannot use the nicknames, Chevy. They have to say Chevrolet. And as a matter of fact, they got so serious with this no nicknames policy, they even had a swear jar in the company that if someone said Chevy, they're supposed to put a quarter into that swear jar. So, all of these examples are fascinating, and at the same time, it tells us that marketers and practitioners, they do not have a clear sense of what to do with nicknames. This is what triggered me to study this.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: And so, as you say, so some companies embrace these nicknames, other companies shy away from them and try to actually make them, you know, unacceptable. What are the kind of types of nicknames out there? I mean, I guess some of them are positive and some of them are negative. Some of them almost like a linked to the actual letters of the name. Others are just sort of what people use. Can you give us a sense of the types of nicknames you see?

ZHE ZHANG: Yes, there are positive nicknames and there are negative nicknames, but in our examples we've found that nicknames can be generally categorized into three types. The first, the type is, phonetic similarity. So for example, Beemer for BMW, Starbies for Starbucks. The second type is based on the brand's characteristics. For example, Big Blue for IBM, Big Brown for UPS or Wallyworld for Wal-Mart. And the third type is, based on the esthetics attributes of the product. For instance, Buckeye for was back in cars. So these are the three major types we found.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Got it. I remember I was I'm from Europe originally and there was a Belgian airline called Sabena. And that became a lengthened to as an acronym: such a bad experience, never again. Now Sabena no longer exists as an airline, which is why I don't mind using it, but I guess there's quite a lot of these negative nicknames, out there, particularly for, for brands which you've had a bad experience.

ZHE ZHANG: Exactly. For example, you have, Taco Hell for Taco Bell. A Canadian example would be Crappy Tire for Canadian Tire.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Indeed. And obviously the companies don't like this and they do their best to stop them being used. But, the trouble is, you can't stop people using a nickname. That's just that's just common parlance.

ZHE ZHANG: Exactly right.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: So tell us a little bit then about the study you did, because we all recognize that nicknames exist, and I imagine it's actually quite difficult to get a sort of a rigorous study of the effects. So, you have this paper and for the audience's interest, I mean, this has been picked up by the Wall Street Journal, The Economist magazine, Harvard Business Review, I mean, you've got a lot of press around this. BMW is powerful, Beemer is not. Nickname branding impairs brand performance. So that is actually the there's almost like the summary of the paper. But just take us a step back. How do you study something like this? What was the actual thing that you did to study nicknames.

ZHE ZHANG: So, in my previous studies, I looked into how consumers use nicknames can affect a brand performance. And in those cases, we found that either it's an individual consumer use nickname in their daily conversations, or even consumers use nicknames in a social context, such as online reviews and social media posts, they always benefit the brands. But we recently see that some brands start to adopt their nicknames in their marketing. For instance, Bloomingdales opened a new Bloomies store and Nordstrom renamed their loyalty program as the Nordy Club. We are interested to understand whether it is a good idea for brands to adopt those nicknames as well. And what we found is that it's actually going to hurt brand performance. So, for instance, the stock price for Bloomingdales and Nordstrom after they made the official announcement of those adopting those nicknames, their stock price dropped by 4%. So, which suggests that, it is not a good strategy, for brands to adopt their nicknames. And we conducted a few other studies to look into different metrics of brand performance. In one study, we found that when Chevrolet posted their social media posts, including their nicknames, Chevy in there, the likes and shares for those posts reduced by 3 to 4 times less than using their formal names. And we also conducted a number of studies looking into click through rates for online advertisements. We found that that's lower if you use that brand nickname in there. It also can reduce consumers willingness to purchase, as well as their brand choice. If a nickname is used.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: I mean, it sounds like this is almost like uniformly negative. So you're you're simple advices to companies don't do this. Don't use don't adopt the nickname that people have given you. Sort of stay above that and always use your formal name. Is that is that the advice? Are there any circumstances where that advice does not apply?

ZHE ZHANG: So we looked at a few contingent effects for this phenomena. We found if you are a competent to brand, this effect is going to get stronger. For example, if you are a law firm that if you adopt, if you adopt a nickname from the consumers, that's actually going to hurt your brand more than, say, if you are a local family restaurant or a charity group. We also found that if brands are using those nicknames for communal, communication goals, that is to talking about the welfare of other people, then using nickname the negative effect might be weakened. For instance, if Starbucks says that Starbies sells the best to coffee, that's not going to be received very well by consumers. But if Starbucks launched a social campaign saying Starbie is an inclusive place, we welcome everybody, then that's going to be more acceptable by consumers.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: So that is interesting, isn't it? So you're saying to some degree, when a company is trying to show itself as authoritative in terms of competence or, or whatever, then always stay formal. If it's more about the community benefits of, of the brand, in a local area, for example, then it's not such a, a big deal, right? And so what is the what is almost like the mechanism and what's going on here. Because obviously there's, there's some some psychology at work here. How do you make sense of this?

ZHE ZHANG: So, we found this can be explained by people's perception of the brand's power. Names are very important social labels for us. And, naming someone is a privilege that, it carries control, ownership and responsibilities. And all of those concepts are related to the concept of power. Power is the asymmetric control of valuable resources. So in a social relationship, the person who has the power can decide what they want to do, whereas the powerless party has to follow and obey. So in the naming context, let's see a few examples, when there's a newborn baby in the family, it's usually only one person has the position to name that baby. Not everybody has that power. And, in the kids and parents relationship, parents can name the kids, but kids cannot name the parents. There's a power difference there, too. In mythologies, many gods would refuse to be named by either their peers or the mortals because they are for fear that this is going to steal their power.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Oh wow. So it all comes down to if I am trying to project an image of a power that I'm in control. I need to sort of maintain that through, you know, adhering, if you like, to the name that I've chosen for myself. And if I allow others to sort of start renaming me or, or repositioning how I'm seeing, then I'm losing power, I'm losing status.

ZHE ZHANG: Exactly. So when consumers give nicknames to brands, that's not going to hurt a brand's power because it doesn't suggest the brands is accepting those nicknames. However, once the brand start to accept those nicknames and use them in their marketing campaigns, it's signals that the brand has very little independence or, power to hold on to their core brand identity. That's the brand name they spend years to build.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Isn't that interesting? I'm just wondering, I mean, because obviously there's lots of charities out there which are trying to sort of tap into, you know, large numbers of people and be more egalitarian. I mean, would I perhaps you didn't study this, but I would imagine they would be more open to having, you know, adopting the nickname that's given to them because they're not trying to project power in the same way.

ZHE ZHANG: Exactly. So that's what we're talking about. Like, you know, if you a local family restaurant, then you want to be perceived as more warm and more approachable from the community. So using nicknames may not be that a bad idea? Yeah.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Fascinating.

MUSICAL BREAK

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: So let's switch over now to I mean, you started touching on it with family names for kitchen things, right? But let's now move to nicknames in the workplace. And this is kind of fun because obviously, you know, we're all aware of this phenomenon. And by the way, before we get into it, I mean, do you have a nickname yourself, to people refer to you by some name that you've got to hear about?

ZHE ZHANG: I heard students calling me professor CMO and thought it's a cool nickname

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: CMO, as in chief marketing officer.

ZHE ZHANG: That's right.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Very good. So that's a nice one. Well, I suspect people call me things behind my back, but I haven't figured out what that is yet, so I'm going to, keep my ear to the ground on that. So. So, yeah, lots of people have nicknames. And again, studying this is not easy. So, I mean, let's let's start with again. Why did you get into this? I mean, obviously it's a natural extension of your corporate work. So, what's what was the trigger for getting into an academic study of this phenomenon?

ZHE ZHANG: Nicknaming someone is a phenomena we encounter in our daily life. We all have nicknames for our friends, families, or even our pets. So previous research, they typically focused on understanding people's nickname usage within their daily relationships, where the two parties usually have similar power in hand. And they found that, for instance, for married couples, if they have nicknames for each other, it could lead to longer marriage and under better marriage satisfaction. However, the workplace is a very different place that usually involves a, power disparity. So that triggers me to understand what does power disparity play in this workplace.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: So your hypothesis again, was that, the power relationship between people has an effect on the, on the, on the use of nicknames and the kind of consequences.

ZHE ZHANG: Exactly

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Okay. So just tell us in a bit more detail then what you actually said, because again, this is not the easiest thing to study. I mean, to even get people to, to talk about nicknames when some of these nicknames are probably a little bit rude, a little bit things I don't want to talk about. I mean, how did you even study that?

ZHE ZHANG: We limited our context, our study scope within non-derogatory nicknames. So those are the, nicknames you come with the good intent, that you want to show affection to your colleagues. And then we found that there's this asymmetric effect there, which is quite interesting because, it's going to be very obvious if you call someone with a negative nickname, they're not going to respond well.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Indeed. And as you say, I mean, people are not going to want to talk about this. We've all seen examples that I'm not going to use any such words here, but we've all heard them use. So you didn't study that. You studied the the domain where people are using what broadly either neutral or even positive nicknames.

ZHE ZHANG: Yes

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Okay. And just be a bit more specific because I, I believe I mean, when I mentioned Panda in the intro. You specifically use the concept of a nickname of Panda, meaning somebody always dresses in black and white. Is that right?

ZHE ZHANG: Yeah. That's right.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Go. And so tell us how you then turned that into an experiment. I mean, because a lot of academics yourself particularly do little experiments, you know, using subjects like our students to put ourselves in a workplace context in order to really kind of tease out the effect of something on something else. Just say a bit more about how you did that.

ZHE ZHANG: So in this study, we randomly assigned participants into four different groups. In one of the groups, we told participants their supervisor called subordinates by their nicknames, such as Panda or the supervisor calls their subordinates by their formal names. And in the other two conditions, participants were told that the subordinates can call the supervisor by the nickname Panda, or the subordinates call the supervisor by the formal name. So those were the four different conditions that we had. When we found that when the subordinates calls the supervisor by a nickname, it significantly increases the subordinates well-being in the workplace, such as their psychological safety, the perceived power, and perceived respect. But we found the opposite when the supervisor calls the subordinates by a nickname subordinates who feel that they're being disrespected, they feel weaker, and they're not feeling that safe at work.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Even when it's a sort of a neutral nickname. It's it doesn't really matter. I mean, Panda is is obviously deliberately chosen to be neutral even that is isomehow almost like the supervisor exercising power and therefore it's disrespectful.

ZHE ZHANG: Exactly. So it's not really about the specific nickname that's being used in the context, it's the action of nicknaming someone that matters

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Got it. And then you also were able to sort of link that up to overall well-being and feelings in the workplace.

ZHE ZHANG: Exactly. And we also found there were some cool evidence in the real world. For example, in one study we looked into some lawsuits data about nickname use in the workplace, and we found 90% of the lawsuits are associated with a supervisor calling subordinates by their nicknames. For example, one case is the subordinates has been called Yoda. And, some people may find that's interesting and entertaining. It might be just a joke between the colleagues, but the person feel this is a super disrespectful and ageist so evolved into a lawsuit.

JULIAN BIRKSINSHAW: Well, you remind me, of course. I mean, it's hard to keep Donald Trump out of our conversations, but when he was first up for president, he was using all these nicknames for his opponents. It was little Marco for Marco Rubio and low energy Jeb Bush. And this is, again, just power games, right? It's basically saying I have the authority, the power to give names to people. And these are particularly if they're derogatory. That is a way of showing that I'm the boss. Right?

ZHE ZHANG: Exactly. And even some non-derogatory nicknames, maybe some general terms that we feel that's our endearment could be perceived wrong if it's coming from the higher power party. For instance, imagine if a boss calls a secretary, sweetie or kiddo. These may not be badly intended, but they perceive it to be wrong.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: No, indeed. And so. So again, the advice is pretty straightforward here. Is that right? The advice is, as a senior person, do not use nicknames for your subordinates. Is that is it?

ZHE ZHANG: Or check with the person. So my suggestion we had is that, you know, regardless if you are the supervisor or a subordinate, if you want to use a nickname for someone else, make sure you want to talk to that person at first and make sure that they're all good.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Look it's good advice and it's well researched, so I think it needs to be heeded. It's it's just a bit of a shame right. Because, you know, the risk is that we make our workplaces overly formal. And I and I mean this across the board. I mean, you know, there are many things that we as senior leaders are told, just don't do that anymore. You know it might have been acceptable in the old days. And it just makes the workplace, a little bit more sterile. You know what I mean?

ZHE ZHANG: Yes.

JULIAN BIRKSINSHAW: And I, I know we have to learn to live without that. Perhaps just a sign of the times. But it is true that that you have to be conscious of the effects that you're having on others. And obviously that means that, not using nicknames, and not commenting on people's appearance and things like that. I know I'm going beyond your research here, but it's, it's an interesting phenomenon that we have to become a little bit less informal in order to make sure that we maintain a high quality, a kind of safe environment for our colleagues.

ZHE ZHANG: That's absolutely true. But one finding we got from this research is also you need to pay attention to the organization is hierarchical culture. If you are a highly hierarchical culture company that using nicknames could be a bad idea. However, if your organization's culture gets flatter, you could consider using nicknames because in a flatter culture, the high power party and the low power party could form a more informal and intimate relationship. So in this case, the using of nicknames could be a sign of affection or friendship.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Yeah, I can see that. And we can think of many startup companies where, you know, there's only 10 or 20 people and, you know, they all joined the founders or joined together and they started out probably as colleagues and friends. And gradually over the years, as that company grows and becomes more hierarchical, it has to then start taking on the trappings of a more traditional company.

ZHE ZHANG: Exactly.

MUSICAL BREAK

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Let's talk a little bit about teaching at Ivey. I believe you were one of the recent winners of faculty awards for teaching with the HBA program. So, obviously you are terrific in the classroom. Just tell us a little bit about how you bring some of this research to life in the classroom.

ZHE ZHANG: Absolutely. I think my students love this because there are so many things we can talk about, using those, nicknames. For instance, the nicknames are consumer languages. So, understanding nicknames can help companies to understand consumer insights. And then also use this as an example to talk about search engine optimization.

JULIAN BIRKINSAHW: Right, exactly. No. I mean, as we all know, marketing today kind of is digital marketing. It's mostly about search engine optimization. So, knowing the right terms to use to, to get people to, to look at use is important. Right?

ZHE ZHANG: Exactly. You don't want a consumer to go online and search for Mickey D's and the first result it got is actually Urban Dictionary, right?

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Yeah. No. You're right. So good. So you are able to bring your research into the classroom to help affect practices, which of course is what Ivey is all about.

ZHE ZHANG: That's true.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Good. So just briefly then what's what do you want your next research. What are you working on now.

ZHE ZHANG: So, I'm really focusing on researching those negative nicknames in the marketplace. Nicknames is such a fascinating area of research and there are so many things that we still don't know, and my current research wants to look at how companies should respond to negative nicknames and why these negative nicknames give bad influences of to an organization.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Got it. Yeah. So, my example of the Belgian airline, I mean, I guess you could try to litigate it, you could try to ban it from being used, but of course the risk if you do that is the name kind of continues to be used anyway.

ZHE ZHANG: Exactly. You cannot stop consumers from using a nickname. And another important part is that companies need to think about how to protect those nicknames, even when they're negative nicknames.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Right.

ZHE ZHANG: I want to give an example here in Canada that the negative nickname, Crappy Tire for Canadian Tire. Of course, the company doesn't like that nickname, so they might be ignoring that for years. In fact, a consumer actually from London, Ontario, trademarked that negative nickname, and then he launched a website, called CrappyTire.com. And Canadian Tire went to tell the consumer, hey, you cannot do that because that's our nickname. They went all the way to the world intellectual property court and the consumer won in that case, because he actually legitimately trademarked this nickname. So this talks about the importance of protecting brand nicknames.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Fascinating. So, we look forward to your next papers on this topic in the years ahead.

ZHE ZHANG: Sounds good.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW: Thanks. You've been listening to Dialogue with the Dean from Ivey Business School. A big thank you to my guest, Zhe Zhang for sharing his time and insights. And of course, thank you for tuning in. On our next episode, I'll be joined by Gal Raz, Associate Professor of Operations Management and Sustainability, to discuss the demand for, and policies around electric vehicles here in Canada and beyond. Until next time, goodbye.

KANINA BLANCHARD: This was Dialogue with the Dean an Ivey Impact podcast series. For more insights from Ivey, including thought leadership on critical issues and additional podcast episodes, visit iveyimpact.ca or subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. Thanks for tuning in.