Should Salesforce Re-Brand its Product Family?
Mar 23, 2007Here is your chance to provide feedback on how you think Salesforce should brand its products. Today we posted two new concepts on the IdeaExchange along with the existing branding. Vote on your favorite and tell us what you think about each of the brands. Which ones resonate and which ones miss the mark?
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"Community" is very generic. You have a community of developers, you have a community of customers, you have a community of partners. Calling successforce (your community of customers) is just going to confuse everyone else.
Nobody is going to actually write "salesforceappexchange" except for salesforce folk forced to do so by your internal marketing and copyright folk :-) It's too much of a mouthful. AppExchange, today's name, is much better ;-)
This looks like some overzealous market droid trying to brand everything with the salesforce name,. and not particularly useful to anyone who wants to actually use it.
Posted by: John | March 25, 2007 at 04:10 AM
Please, please, please no
Posted by: Todd | March 26, 2007 at 10:17 AM
Without a doubt, one of the biggest impediment to nonprofit adoption is the name of the platform. Anything to make it more "community-like" is better,
Posted by: Marc | March 26, 2007 at 11:43 AM
I like it just the way it is today. I've finally figured out what everything is and how I can utilize the different areas. Please don't change it now. It's much clearer than it has been in the past.
Posted by: Chris | March 26, 2007 at 04:00 PM
Personally I'd reccomend dropping the term "Salesforce" for the platform - it's a pain trying to explain to people who want on-demand workflows where you are using the platform as a development/deployment system that this has nothing to do with "Sales" - unless you need it to. It takes the first 3 days of an engagement to unwind the wrong associations before you can explain what you are proposing.
Stick with Salesforce for the SFA application. Brand the platform and comminty with the pre-fix APEX.
Apex Platorm
Apex "Exchange" - I'd consider a change to that because it's hard to say - you could always stay with AppExchange, though it's non-standard.
and.
Apex Community
then Salesforce SFA is an application that sits on the platform. You can then go through a rationalisation exercise on SFA, Service-and-Support, etc. etc. and get some really good naming system in that brand hiearchy.
Posted by: Gareth Davies | March 26, 2007 at 04:06 PM
I think "Today" concept is the best. The others are way to lenghty and conceptual.
The way it is now is clear, punchy and logic.
Cheers,
René
Posted by: René Theil | March 27, 2007 at 09:56 PM
Today is best. The others are too lengthy. Salesforce/Salesforce.com is the core brand identity. Apex, Appexchange and Successforce support. Most decision makers do not think or talk about the supporting cast, they talk about Salesforce.
Posted by: Neal Mengel | March 28, 2007 at 08:45 AM
Please don't. Stick with what you've got.
Posted by: Scooter | March 29, 2007 at 05:31 AM
As a branding specialist, I highly recommend you go with Concept 2. It lets you leverage and build upon your corporate brand, "Salesforce. It emulates the brand architecture of some of the world's most highly successful brands like Intel and GE.
Posted by: Paula Satow | March 29, 2007 at 01:48 PM
Yes, you should definitely empahsize the word "force" in your logo. Good branding, that.
Posted by: Wry | March 29, 2007 at 04:02 PM
I can understand the reasoning, but wow ... there's been so much renaming over the couple, three years that I've been using Salesforce. I'm leaning toward the "please, please no" above at this point.
Posted by: | April 02, 2007 at 10:24 AM
I'm with the please please no camp, like other comments I work with Service & Support - getting them to stop fretting about the whole "sales" slant is enough of a mountain at the moment. Please don't change it.
Posted by: | April 03, 2007 at 09:29 AM
I'd say, leave everything AS IS for existing folks, and just start a second 'clone' brand - that takes "Sales" out of the name entirely. Salesforce may have the recognition, but as far as I can tell, it's becoming less and less central as the salespoint for the platform.
Posted by: Deano | April 03, 2007 at 05:10 PM
We definitely need a new branding. When I discuss "salesforce" I have to spend a good deal of time talking about how the name is misleading, can be used for many other functions, etc. However, since the name is so well known, it should be kept but enhanced. Concept 2 does that well, concept 1 is visually cluttered, and the current concept is conceptually cluttered.
Posted by: sandra schanzer | April 04, 2007 at 07:43 AM
Please don't change, what you have today does the job.
Posted by: Erica Stowe | April 04, 2007 at 11:26 AM
And while you're at it, if you can change the fonts (or, radical idea, put spaces between the words) to make it legible, that will probably help.
Posted by: Daniel | April 04, 2007 at 06:30 PM
Move to
"Sforce" as the Brand
Posted by: EAF | April 05, 2007 at 05:11 AM
Do not try and fix the things that are not broken. There are larger needs in the community than an inability to recognize a Salesforce application. Lets focus on enhancing the application developed by a Forbes top 25 fastest growing company. Everything is fine as it is.
Posted by: Jon | April 05, 2007 at 08:26 AM
KISS - Keep It Simple Sweetheart.
Concepts 1 and 2 are big steps backward.
As the Salesforce platform evolves beyond its Salesroots (the core apps),
the branding will be in the Force.
How about
SalesForce
AppForce (or ExchangeForce)
ApexForce
SuccessForce
Posted by: Hell's Kitchen | April 05, 2007 at 10:21 AM
As a new user/developer, one of the biggest impediments to set-up/adoption is the "we're corporate" influence. Look at the insistence that standard tabs can't be re-labeled without numerous other implications. And look at the levels/pricing. There are great small business and non-profit applications that don't need or even want such structure and layered hierachy. A potential lead/customer doesn't even need to have annual sales. Might be a donor to a non-profit. Might be a retired Navy admiral running a fleet of small fishing boats. Please stop being so structured, and become more "user friendly."
Posted by: Jim | April 05, 2007 at 02:24 PM
I am a new user of this database, and find it extremely time consuming, and non user friendly. I have used ACT, and Soaring in the past, and find that I get in and out of my contacts, type notes, and move on to the next, three times faster with those products. does anybody else feel the same way?
Posted by: G Man | April 05, 2007 at 05:48 PM
I would like to see better branding for Service and Support. A few years back you branded it as SupportForce, I like that. If not that specific phrase, then something else that would help differentiate it easily from SFA for Service and Support prospects.
Posted by: Mark Bruso | April 06, 2007 at 07:07 PM