Last week the National Speakers Association (NSA) announced that they were going to start switching to a single-word name of PLATFORM (with an image of a stylized letter O shaped like a balloon) and using the motto:
“Inform. Influence. Inspire.”
It already looks like a hilariously poor choice, and I expect that it will NOT happen. Why?
There already is a best-selling 2012 book by Michael Hyatt titled Platform: get noticed in a noisy world. Hyatt has been a speaker for over 25 years, and is in a business called Dynamic Communicators International which already runs a conference called PLATFORM. So, he is rather well positioned to oppose NSA trying to trademark the name PLATFORM.
Hyatt has a large tribe of followers, some of whom have been quite vocal:
Connie Bennett
Did NSA leaders forget to Google ”Platform” before stomping on Michael Hyatt’s Brand?
Daniel Decker
Do your research first- lessons from the National Speakers Association PLATFORM rebrand and Michael Hyatt
James Hahn
Why the NSA highjacked Michael Hyatt’s Brand part 1
Mike Kim
Michael Hyatt “Owns” Platform ... And 4 More Reasons the NSA Blew It on Rebranding
I understand that NSA felt they needed a change because they were no longer just national. But, I belong to two organizations that renamed just by adding the word International to their former national acronyms. American Society for Metals became ASM International, and National Association of Corrosion Engineers became NACE International.
Maybe NSA also felt that their acronym was tainted by the recent revelations about the other NSA, the U.S. National Security Agency. Perhaps they just should have run an ad explaining the difference:
The falling image was inspired by this warning sign.
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