Renaming and Redesign Was No Small Decision

We’ve seen an interesting change recently in our local business media market: the former Small Business Times changed its name to BizTimes Milwaukee and redesigned both its weekly print edition and its website.

On the surface, the move seems an obvious choice. Small Business Times has been about a lot more than “small” business for many years; the old name was pigeonholing the paper’s appeal in a way that no longer applied. Meanwhile, its website url, www.biztimes.com, already reflected the wider net for business news that the operation was casting.

So bringing it all in line under the name BizTimes—for consistency across the mission, actions and communications of the company—made perfect sense.

But that’s not to say the overhaul was an easy thing to do. Brand and name changes take a lot of time, money and guts. The move also put BizTimes into more obvious, direct competition with a much larger counterpart, The Business Journal of Milwaukee.

As times change, smart companies know they must continue to evolve, as must their marketing communications efforts. It’s impressive that the BizTimes team had the vision and will to undergo this transition and celebrate it as a positive step forward for the future.