Osaic, the brand new model identify for Advisor Group, is being greeted with a blended response from some members of the monetary companies business.
The agency’s rebranding initiative goes hand in hand with its beforehand introduced plans to unite its eight companies into one entity. It indicated in April that it was contemplating a brand new model identify.
“Some folks commented to me that the identify seemed like a drug like Ozempic, whereas one advisor mentioned he wasn’t even positive how to pronounce it,” Jon Henschen, president of the recruiting agency Henschen & Associates, instructed ThinkAdvisor by e-mail Thursday.
“One among my recruiters jokingly mentioned, ‘Osaic stands for: Oh S— One other Id Disaster,’” he mentioned.
“Once they have been owned by AIG, that they had an id disaster when [one of the broker-dealers] had the identify AIG Monetary Advisors,” he famous. “The 2008-2009 meltdown made that identify poisonous, which is after they got here up with SagePoint.”
However, with the brand new identify Osaic, “this isn’t an id disaster now however quite, by some means attempting to deliver unity by a brand new identify, [and] rebranding can deliver unintended penalties,” Henschen mentioned.
“I don’t assume an alternate identify was vital,” he defined. “They may have simply passed by Advisor Group which has historical past and explains what they’re.”
‘Proper for You?’
Additionally questioning the brand new identify was Rob Farmer, managing director and head of communications at The Rudin Group, who instructed ThinkAdvisor: “Firms bear identify and branding modifications for a lot of good causes. Advisor Group’s acknowledged rationale — to unify their numerous companies below a single construction — is sensible.”
He, too, most well-liked the corporate’s previous model identify, saying: “You may argue that ‘Advisor Group’ was efficient, and clear, in service of that already. What’s much less clear is the that means of the [new] identify itself.”
Farmer conceded that it “could be that over the long run it can create just a little daylight between them and a crowded, aggressive market.”
However Farmer added: “My preliminary response is an urge so as to add a tagline: Ask your physician if Osaic is best for you!”
‘Extra Than Simply the Identify’
“We’ve seen a few of these feedback earlier than,” Osaic’s government vp of selling and communications, Jen Roche, instructed ThinkAdvisor in a telephone interview Thursday afternoon. “Everytime you undergo a rebrand — you announce a brand new identify, a brand new brand, something like that — you’re going to have lots of people who adore it, you’re going to have some individuals who don’t prefer it.”
Subsequently, Roche mentioned: “We knew we have been going to get a blended response as we launched our new model and we actually anticipated unfavorable response from recruiters and opponents. That’s their job. That’s what they do.”
What was extra necessary to the corporate, nevertheless, was that “our advisors, our purchasers, our workers had an overwhelmingly constructive response to the brand new model,” she mentioned.
Roche additionally clarified particularly why the corporate chosen Osaic as its new model identify, telling ThinkAdvisor that it was derived from the phrase mosaic, which suggests “loads of various things are coming collectively to create one thing lovely and new.”
