Tale Of The Comma

Charles

You know all about Halley's Comet , right? Comes around every 76 years, makes a big splash , and becomes legend again till it returns. Sort of like Wells Fargo—without the going away part, I mean. Wells Fargo flies around cyber space, meets up with rockets, and makes a big splash. Wells and Fargo themselves were innovative businessmen who seized opportunities to bring services to customers (the stagecoach) and provide the means necessary to satisfy customer demands (fast transfer of money by telegraph).

There's an old tale out there that Wells Fargo changed its name after a printing error. But like the belt buckle problem and the shotgun fiasco, it's only a tale. Bob Chandler uncovered the real truth back in 1980 for an article in the Wells Fargo Banker, the company's internal magazine at that time. Pity—the myth is better than the facts. Isn't that always the case? (We regularly scold Bob for replacing exciting myth with boring facts.)

When Henry Wells and William Fargo opened for business in San Francisco in 1852, the name was easy—Wells, Fargo & Co. Makes sense, right? Seventeen years later, Wells Fargo consolidated all the major stagecoach lines in the West and made the name grander—Wells, Fargo and Company. An ampersand came later, but the comma remained: Wells, Fargo & Company.

Until 1905, Wells Fargo was both bank and express company. That year, the two became separate entities for a constellation of complicated reasons. Let's just say it was easier for the top guys to run things better, because that's what the company has always tried to do. Anyway, the bank part of Wells Fargo changed its name in 1875 to Wells Fargo Bank and merged the two founders' identities. It was Branding History—with the swipe of an eraser, the company fused two last names into one, single entity. The bank had a singular presence in the mind. The express part of the company followed suit in 1889 1898, and the name was as it is today.

(I have a hunch that it made it easier to write the name because everyone probably forgot the comma anyway. But that's just me ...)

The myth  is that a huge stationery order arrived that accidentally left out the comma. Wells Fargo had to choose between sending back the whole thing or going forward. They chose the latter and somehow decided that the comma-less name was better. Or everyone got used to it. Or they got the huge order for free (my vote!).

The trouble is, it just isn't so. The branding was Wells Fargo's conscious choice to tighten the name and its effect. While history is most fun with triumph being traced to clumsy mistakes, it's just the opposite here. Wells Fargo got better through naming innovations, as well as through technical or service innovation.