Is it a bus? Is it a plane?

It’s Britain’s best-known insurer. But after a rebranding, many people now wonder if it’s a bus company. Miles Brignall asks why Aviva is ditching Norwich Union 

• Saturday May 3 2008

It’s either an inspired piece of global branding, or an expensive name change that sees the loss of one of Britain’s best-known financial brands.

This week, the UK’s biggest insurer, Aviva, revealed that it will scrap its 200-year-old trading name, Norwich Union.

In doing so, it becomes the latest British corporate name to rebrand in the footsteps of Midland Bank, which controversially, but ultimately, successfully transformed itself into HSBC. Other rebrands have been less happy: the Post Office retreated from “Consignia” amid widespread public derision.

Does Aviva now risk the same condemnation? Guardian Money took to the streets to ask the public about the change. Most people believed Aviva was a bus company. One thought it was a feminine hygiene product. Others said the name was just plain silly. Everybody condemned dropping the name Norwich Union, which they knew as a financial institution, not a bar of soap.

Norwich Union was founded in 1797 by Thomas Bignold, a wine merchant and banker. It has become one of the few insurance brands that stands out in a sea of bland names adopted by multinational companies.

Aviva said this week the rebranding is part of its strategy “to grow and transform the business to compete on a global scale” and that, following a major review, the Norwich Union name will be phased out over the next two years.

Andrew Moss, Aviva group’s chief executive, justifies the move by saying 60% of its business is generated outside Britain, and that it trades as Aviva in more than 20 of the 27 countries in which it operates. In some of these places, the Norwich Union name “means nothing”, he says.

“We have to compete effectively on the world stage alongside our international peers. Creating a brand that is known across the globe is an important step,” he says.

The company refuses to say how much the rebranding will cost. It argues the changes will mean it will only have to promote a single brand. The RAC – also part of the Aviva group – will retain its name because the roadside recovery division has a “specific trust and recognition” for its members.

Branding consultants defended Aviva’s name change, predicting that any furore will be long forgotten in a decade’s time. Rita Clifton, the UK chairwoman of the world’s largest brand consultancy, Interbrand, says: “Increasingly international companies are choosing to rebrand themselves in a bid to get away from the parochial connotations. When [drinks company] Diageo came up with that name it attracted great consternation, but it has been a great success.”

Within the financial services sector she picked out the HSBC rebrand as a success. “The Royal Mail’s choice of Consignia was less so. However, the rationale behind the move was understandable. It was probably picked because it would have helped the company to move into international markets – I suspect Aviva’s decision reflects similar sentiments and the global nature of the business,” she said.

This is not the first time the insurance giant has courted controversy of this kind. In 2002, the company, then know as CGNU following a raft of mergers, faced shareholder hostility at its AGM after announcing it was switching to Aviva. One branded it “silly” while others remarked on its similarity to Arriva, the bus company.

In Norwich itself, there is an air of resignation about the name change. NU is still the city’s largest employer. “Norwich will be an outpost of Aviva global and not at the beating heart of the operation,” a local newspaper columnist says.

What do you think?

“Aviva. It sounds familiar – is it the company that runs the buses?” asked Ty Tikari, an architect who was – yes, you’ve guessed it – waiting for a bus. When asked what Norwich Union did, he replied: “Is it a bank? Doesn’t it do financial products or something similar?”

Photographer Ana Grimaldi was not alone in never having 
heard of Aviva. When asked to say what she thought it does, she correctly guessed that it sold insurance products. However, she knew all about NU and, 
when told the name was being ditched, she pulled a bemused face. “Why? What’s the point?

Novelist and food writer Mark Daniel had no idea what Aviva does – and when given a list of choices, he finally elected for the manufacturer of feminine hygiene products. Like most of the people we interviewed, he did know exactly what Norwich Union did.

Retired London resident Edward Morton, as a shareholder in Aviva, said he was aware of the brand, but added that he had no idea of the impending switch. “I don’t think a great deal of it. No doubt the rebranding exercise will be hugely expensive.”

Post Office worker Ceta McVeigh, from Deptford in SE London, had “no idea what, or who, Aviva is” but she knew all about the outgoing name. “Norwich Union has to be one of the best-known insurance firms around – why are they getting rid of it? It seems crazy to me,” she says.