Great Perceptions Last

There are moments in life when you don't realise you're making an important decision. Only years later do you understand its significance. One of those moments came with my first business acquisition.The business was called Grapplegroup (Cape) Pty Ltd. Within South Africa's design community, Grapple was a respected and established name. The obvious decision would have been to keep it.

But I couldn't.I simply didn't see the future of the business confined
to one country or one culture."Grapple" is a wonderful English word, rich with meaning in Anglo cultures. But outside those circles, it risked becoming a name that was misunderstood — or simply meaningless. So I made what seemed like a practical decision.I reduced Grapplegroup to three letters.

GPL

Looking back, I spent far less time making that decision than I spent explaining it over the years that followed, often wondering whether those three letters might one day come to represent something beyond their origin. Eventually, they did. Great Perceptions Last. I liked it—not because I intended to rename the company (I never did), but because it captured something I had gradually come to believe throughout my career.

As branding professionals, we spend countless hours discussing positioning, differentiation, and identity; these are only the means. Reputation is the final judge, and reputation is democratized perception. Perhaps that's why those three words, Great Perceptions Last, have stayed with me for so many years. Not because they're a reasonable interpretation of three initials. But because they remind me that every brand resides as real estate in someone's mind.

The privilege is to earn that place, and if you do that well enough…

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