A friend's birthday gathering was yesterday evening at Splash, a nightlife venue that illuminates some very interesting branding issues.

For years, this venue had been known simply as "Splash." Then, about two years ago, after an extensive renovation, the owners changed the name to "SBNY (Splash Bar New York)."

This didn't stick. Over the next several months, nobody ever said "I was at SBNY." Everyone continued to say "Splash." It was like the FedEx Kinko's problem where nobody calls it "FedEx Kinko's;" they just call it "Kinko's."

To ownership's credit, they reversed this branding decision and now call it "Splash" again. You can see some remnants of the "SBNY" attempt in some of the video promotions, but the primary name is clearly "Splash."

Lesson #1: If you have a good business reputation and your customer base likes a name better than your suggested change, it's good business to reverse the change.

Lesson #2: If your customers know your business by one syllable, a change to four syllables is unlikely to work.