Feeling a bit snarky today, be warned. Saw this tweet this morning. From the release: “October 13 will be a historic day in the history of RTNDA – it will be the last day that the association is known by that name. As I’m sure you know you by now, RTNDA is changing its name to RTDNA–the Radio Television Digital News Association.”

Is it just me, or is this just… pointless?

I did a quick search. Here’s more:

National Association of Demolition Contractors to National Demolition Association

What’s in a name? (American Forestry Association changes name to American Forests)

National Frame Builders Association now known as National Frame Building Association

I remember hearing about SNAP changing to Association Media and Publishing

Here’s an article from ASAE about why a name change can be a good idea – “For an association whose name is no longer reflective of a changing industry or a diversifying membership, experts say a name change may help retain current members and attract new members down the road.” OK, but do those examples above really do that? I mean really? How many thousands of dollars (and trees) have been wasted on new stationery alone? How many hundreds of volunteer man hours?

This one’s not so bad – American School Food Service Association changes name to School Nutrition Association

I get that sometimes a name change makes sense, in the case of a merger, for example. I also think that if an organization is truly taking advantage of the down economy to figure out what its core values are, and maybe get rid of the “association feature creep”, then that might be a good reason too. But in that case, the name change should have the tenets of word of mouth marketing. The new name should be “easy, interesting, and shareable”. Acronyms should be memorable in some way. I though SNAP was a cool acronym (although Lynn can take that one over when she goes 501c(3)…). Seems most association industry folk would know it was an association publications org. How many decades will it take for the new name to catch on (and who really cares)? And “RTNDA is now RTDNA”??? – come on. Ridiculous, IMHO.

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