Would anyone wear your name

On a Saturday morning along the waterfront in Abu Dhabi, half the runners are wearing the same shirt. It belongs to their running club. Nobody paid them to wear it. Most of them paid for it, and they wear it far more often than the club needs them to.

Now picture that shirt printed with the name of the company that services your air conditioning. They may be excellent. They turn up on time, the price is fair, the unit works. You would still not wear their name to the beach.

That is a useful test, and most businesses fail it, which is fine. Very few names are the kind people want to carry around. The trouble starts when a business that is not one of them behaves as if it were: months on a mood board, a manifesto and a tote bag, when what its customers wanted was a fair price and a phone that someone answers.

The names people wear give them something. A sense of belonging to a group, a signal about what they care about, a story to tell when someone asks. The club gives its members a reason to get up at five and a crowd who will notice if they do not. The shirt only records that.

So the question is not how to make a better logo. It is why anyone would want to be seen with it. What does the wearer get?

If the honest answer is nothing, then good service at a fair price is the whole brand, and that is a perfectly good business. If there is an answer, build that part properly. The shirts will look after themselves.