SyFy has the Best July Since Rebranding

By Peter K. Lam

SyFy - Imagine Greater

When I first heard about NBC Universal’s Sci Fi was planning to rebrand, I was very skeptical of it’s success. I was looking at the rebranding from an internet marketing perspective and not as the business as a whole. In terms of internet marketing, NBC Universal owns a very rich and hard to obtain keyword as their brand. They always get the highest traffic and many hits whenever anybody searches using the keyword “sci fi.” Their shows appear on page one of most search results and people who are just looking for general sci fi may also stumble upon their site. As an internet marketer, having the domain “scifi.com” is SEO gold!! So for me I wonder why NBC would want to rebrand? They’ve had so much success with their current business model. Changing the brand could be a huge mistake.

A day after Sci Fi evolved into SyFy, CNNMoney.com release an article talking about the financial and business implications of the rebranding. Turns out that the executives over at NBC Universal actually knew what they were doing. They were expanding their program base to be more than just sci fi oriented programming. Sci Fi as a brand was missing out on so many potential advertisers because advertisers were not willing to be on a network that’s just sci fi. Rebranding and expanding the program base for the network allowed more possibilities to increase revenue with potential advertisers who may have passed if the network remain as “Sci Fi.” Today Sci Fi Wire, the news site powered by SyFy, broke the news of SyFy’s record-breaking July.

Having operated for the past month, I look back and see that NBC Universal made a very smart business decision. The brand “SyFy” is very unique and can truly exist as a brand. The phrase “sci fi” cannot really be trademark since it’s such a generic term that’s used to describe all types of media, not just sci fi televison. Rebranding would not only make the network more identifiable but also more profitable with bigger advertising opportunities. So all in all, SyFy is pretty successful. They’ve already built a lot of SEO with “sci fi” so it will take some work to regain the lead with the most hits for “sci fi” keyword searches but I don’t think it will take too long. The new brand is already becoming wildly popular and pretty soon those keyword searches for “sci fi” will start bringing up content from SyFy again in no time.