Hacker News Reader

Comment by collegeburner | Hacker News Reader

Ask anyone outside of Britain what "The Met" is and you'll hear about the museum.

I don't think one very small country should be the primary blocker to their branding decisions.

Even in Britain, the context will clear it up straight away. Humans are, theoretically at least, very good at dealing with ambiguity. I'm hard pressed to think of a conversation where context clues wouldn't either make it abundantly clear, or prompt further questions about, which "Met" one is talking about, between a world famous art gallery and the police head quarters probably more famously known by another name.

Would this conversation ever happen?

I'm going on holiday to New York City. I'm going to the Met to check out their impressionist paintings.

Oh, they turned Scotland Yard into an art gallery now?

The met put out a press release

I'm applying for a job at/in (the only tiny difference) the met

Nevermind all the sentences you could come up with where the context is revealed only later, so yes you immediately realise you had it wrong, but you had it wrong.

It's not really about 'people will be confused' anyway, I just mean it's bad brand awareness, it weakens the identity.

The only example I can think of with a strong brand for a generic name is Apple.

Shouldn't it be Canada Yard or something?

Curious as to what your definition of very small is. The UK is above median land area for a country, #21 for population, #6 for gdp, it's principal island is the 9th largest.

I mean, yes, the UK is not the same scale as the USA, China, India etc, but I'd put to you that it is not so very small

England has about 2% of the area of the US, so from a US perspective, it's quite small.

Double the population of Canada though.

I agree we're small, much smaller than the USA by any metric, but surely we're talking about population rather than land mass here.

That's true, population matters more. As does wealth and cultural influence, both of which are hugely outsized in England's case.

American here. My first thought is the opera. And I've traveled to NYC just to visit the museum.

Spent most of my life in NYC, and if you say "The Met" in to someone in the city 99/100 people will assume you mean the museum.

I didn't mean it like 'think of the British', I meant 'think of yourself' - you want a strong brand identity right, that's the whole point of this kind of exercise I assume, and you have a much better shot at that with something unique/specific/weird.

Nobody outside of the UK is thinking about police foremost when they here 'met', (unless there's similarly named constabularies elsewhere perhaps, wouldn't surprise me if someone piped up from HK/India/Australia to say their city's police is also 'the met' for example) but that doesn't matter to that met.

Say there's some artist called so-and-so Park, you'd be ill-advised to start a gallery called 'The Park', it's not at all unique, it's poorly googleable, it's unlikely to ever be the first thing that comes to mind when someone hears the name.

Another example: I think OnePlus (or is it OnePlusOne? I honestly don't even know) - the phone company - is held back by its poor choice of name. I'm not denying its success, I just think it's despite the name, that it could be a lot bigger, have a much stronger brand.

I imagine you'd hear more about the Opera. But then I am British.

I'm outside of Britain and I've never heard of the museum. never.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com