What's In a Name? Sometimes, Too Much Work

Photograph of Bernie Brillstein with his Muppet doppelgänger by Jean-Paul Aussenard/WireImage.com

Hollywood is known for its assertively inspirational one-word brands. Endeavor is a top talent agency. Brian Grazer and Ron Howard's hit-making production company is known simply as Imagine.

Skim the Hollywood Creative Directory (the town's unofficial phone book) and you'll find companies with monikers like Ascendant, Hypnotic, Intrepid, Maverick and Renegade.

So last winter, when Brillstein-Grey Entertainment's Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Liebman and Cynthia Pett-Dante decided their management and production firm was due for a name change, they considered the bold, blunt approach. But only briefly. When it came to such singular branding, Brillstein-Grey had been burned before.

In 1999, with great fanfare, the firm's then leader, Brad Grey, changed its name to Basic Entertainment. He took out front page ads in the entertainment trade papers and gave staffers BASIC business cards, stationery, even sweatshirts.

But Basic proved too basic for a firm that not only represented actors but also produced entertainment (the new ABC series Sam I Am with Christina Applegate, for example, and HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher).

After just eight months, Grey changed the name back, admitting that "Basic gave me a stomach ache.... I realized it was that horrible name."

In their 2004 book The Making of a Name: The Inside Stories of the Brands We Buy, Steve Rivkin and Fraser Sutherland tell of many such misfires. There was the new milk drink called Raging Cow (unveiled on the heels of the mad cow disease panic) and Reebok's Incubus running shoe.

As Rivkin and Sutherland wrote: "Only after putting the shoe on the market did [Reebok] discover that the word denoted a demon that visited women while they were sleeping and ravished them."

At Brillstein-Grey, everyone agreed that the name needed an update, if only to avoid confusion. The continued reference to Grey -- who had sold the firm to Liebman and Pett-Dante in July 2005, after becoming chairman and C.E.O. of Paramount Pictures -- gave the impression that he still held sway. One idea was to go with a partial list of the firm's partners. But Liebman and others he polled rejected that approach for fear of sounding like a stodgy law office.

After some discussion, Liebman and his colleagues decided it would be nuts to give up the firm's link to its renowned founding partner, Bernie Brillstein -- the 76-year-old grandfather and author of The Little Stuff Matters Most: 50 Rules from 50 years of Trying to Make a Living and Where Did I Go Right? You're No One in Hollywood Unless Someone Wants You Dead.

After all, this was the guy who helped launch The Muppets and Saturday Night Live. (Brillstein represented Muppets creator Jim Henson until he died and still represents SNL creator Lorne Michaels.)

Having decided to keep Brillstein up front, Entertainment was the obvious -- if predictable -- second beat. The only question was the kicker.

"At one point we considered Brillstein Entertainment Group. The problem with that was BEG," Liebman said with a laugh, remembering that when he suggested that acronym to Brillstein, the white-haired Santa Claus look-alike extended his palm like a panhandler, pouted and said, "This could be the new logo!"

Liebman added: "And by the way, we didn't reject it right away."

"We're all beggars and peddlers," said Brillstein, adding that he was touched by his colleagues' decision to keep his surname in play. His own legacy aside, the new name makes sense . "Anemic! Anorexic!" he said, spoofing some of the more abstract names (Killer, Mojo, Wingnut) that adorn Hollywood companies today. Brillstein prefers something more old-school, he said. "This is a business of people."

Liebman agreed. "We made a decision -- we need to be clear," he said. "You don't want to require an explanation. That would have been a time suck and an energy suck."

Once Brillstein Entertainment Partners was coined, there were arguments over design. The choice of a green and grey-black lowercase logo came only after much discussion of the meanings of particular colors.

Red evoked the powerful Creative Artists Agency, which is known for setting its CAA logo against a scarlet background. Blue had long been the chosen palette of International Creative Management, another established talent agency.

What will happen when Brillstein -- who still represents Michaels, Martin Short, and longtime clients, and has no plans to retire -- leaves the firm? Will Brillstein Entertainment Partners still work?

Liebman thinks so.

"Bernie is loved," he said. "He's a legend. I felt he would live on."

by Amy Wallace