SLAMBOARD

The town where I went to college was very much a College Town. One thing that this entailed was that a business like a pizza restaurant or a nightclub would have its clientel change over almost completely every four years.

The bars seemed to change their names an awful lot. I ended up living and working in or near this town for ten years after I graduated.

This is an exceptional situation. Most businesses, like the colleges themselves for instance, take decades to build a reputation that is associated with their name. If there is talk of changing the name of something that is considered an institution, the discussion is usually fraught.

For most businesses, a name change is a big deal. McDonalds is not going to change its name anytime soon. Walmart will be Walmart long after Wally is no longer with us.

Cingular Wireless has recently been renamed The New AT&T. The branding of Cingular was less than a decade old and AT&T is about as iconic as it gets.

KFC was Kentuky Fried Chicken. They killed two birds with one stone with the change, the State of Kentucky was rumored to be after some monetary consideration in exchange for the use of their name and a health conscious society didn’t want to be reminded that the chicken was fried (in deep fat). Interestingly, the company is bringing the old name back in a selective way. It’s exclusion from packaging and advertisement spawned some nostalgia.

I think it would be really interesting if Microsoft were to change its name. Please leave a comment suggesting the new name for Microsoft and I will pass it on to them for you.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 7:20 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.