NOAH LEVIN

Choosing a band name is surprisingly like adopting a pet. Occasionally you get lucky and it finds you, but more often you spend a while weighing your options before deciding on something that your family may still not be entirely sure about. Once you choose one, you better be happy with it because it requires a lot of effort to make it work, and changing your mind would be frustrating for everyone. I am currently in a five person folk-rock band, and we landed on the name, The Mercy Rule, after about six months of discussions and over one hundred scrapped concepts. Recently we discovered that the band name has been taken by several other small bands across the country, but suggestions for change are being quickly shot down because we feel we have put so much work already into getting our name out to the public and establishing our identity on the web. I plan to discuss why our reluctance to switch names is largely due to non-rational escalation of commitment. In other words, we put forth so many resources into The Mercy Rule that we would hate to see that time and money wasted even if a better option presented itself.

We started brainstorming for band names by passing around a word document back in December of last year, adding in any idea we could possibly think of and giving them ratings from one to five. The process of making the list took over a month’s time and a large amount of effort from all of us from both generating and commenting on the ideas. At one point we blocked out an entire Saturday from our busy schedules to have a band meeting about choosing the name. Eight hours past, and we had nothing but three empty boxes of pizza and a fascinating discussion about the meaning of The Pittsburgh Left.

Another month or two went by of expanding the list and heated debated over the best name possible. This only added to the long delay between expenditures (wasting band practice time) and returns (giving our fans a simple identity to remember and latch on to), which put more and more pressure on the crucial decision. Finally, we choose The Mercy Rule because it was floating toward the top of our list, and decided to just go with it in full force. We created websites, logos, advertising campaigns, and even recorded our first demo under the name.

Our commitment to this idea was stronger then ever. We were emotionally invested in the name, parading it around like our new pet. When we began to hear word that other bands had the same name, we were extremely upset. Yet today, a full month later, we still remain overly confident that this will not affect our image. We are convinced that change would be too costly, both financially and emotionally. We talk about how the other Mercy Rules do not have enough of a following and are too far outside Pittsburgh to make a difference. Furthermore, we are concerned about our reputation because our fans may not take well to a name switch.

I personally think we need to change the name. We are focusing too much on the sunk costs, the efforts we already made like creating the logos and posters and the months we spent stressing about choosing a name to begin with, all of which we can’t take back now. We’re psychologically attached and overly concerned about reputation when we should be concerned about our future and how if one of these other bands with our name becomes big, we would be in much worse shape than we are now. It may help us to consult someone with less emotional attachment, and to be cautious of falling in love with just option when there are plenty of others to consider. We’ve escalated too far into The Mercy Rule, and because we plan to continue working on the band after college to get a record deal, I plan to present this reflection to the band in the hopes of inspiring constructive discussion on the issue.