Sometimes a brand’s strength can become its biggest weakness. Take for example the incredible time share community we belong to outside of Orlando, Florida named Orange Lake. It was created by the same guy who founded Holiday Inns — and so no expense was spared when building it. It has its own water theme park on site, as well as a golf course designed by none other than Arnold Palmer. It’s also among the most requested time shares worldwide.

So naturally they wanted to expand upon their success and build other communities, in this case in Vermont and Wisconsin. The problem? The name! Orange Lake reeks of all things Florida. It’s perfect for the Disney area (Orange Lake is less than a mile from the mouse) But the name seems oddly out of place for Vermont or Wisconsin.

And it gets worse.

The new community in Wisconsin is at Lake Geneva. So the newsletter arrives in the mailbox announcing “Orange Lake, at Lake Geneva” which we are somehow supposed to know is in Wisconsin. Orange Lake Vermont, we are informed, is located at Ascutney Mountain Resort. These are all now part of “The Family of Orange Lake Resorts.”

The real question that should be asked is whether “Orange Lake” is so well branded, so famous and so ubiquitous, that you will always think of the time share community and not an “orange” “lake.” I’m guessing most of you have not even heard of this place, so you would most likely think of Orange Lake as a business or resort near a body of water in a sunny location.

There’s no easy answers here… I’m not a big fan of just using acronyms to solve everything. O.L.R. would be less misleading, but inherently meaningless. But the owners of Orange Lake might have considered developing separate brand identities for each community… ones that fit each region. Either that, or develop a new parent name over all the communities and then provide each one its own identity. Before Wyndham bought them out, Fairfield Communities did just that. They had Fairfield at Sapphire Valley and Fairfield Mountains and Fairfield Star Island and on and on. That made sense and provided a naming hierarchy that they could continually build upon.

But as it stands now, I just can’t relate to strapping on a pair of winter boots and snow skiing at Orange Lake.