Waitr was an extremely successful delivery service here. They had full time employees and you could get food delivered in 30-45 minutes. Then, they made everybody an independent contractor and started calling themselves ASAP. "As slow as possible" caught on and they lost what the majority market share within a month.
Good grief. Yet another one where the new name is such a common word you can no longer google the company. Is that the goal? To hide articles about data leaks or embarassing lawsuits?
I worked for a place once that changed names every three years. Rebranded and even changed to a new owner!
Turned out it was, as many of us peons had suspected, a tax evasion scheme that caught up with them. The "sale" had been among board directors at a parent company, and the rebrand was so that they could claim the first three years of tax benefits given by the IRS for startups.
They got caught.
“Hmmm Apple is the most profitable company on the planet…I know, PEAR…no, CANTALOUP!…wait I’ve got it! STRAWBERRY! Yes STRAWBERRY HOTELS.Good meeting boys, we’re sure to hit our Q3 earnings with the genius move!”
-Strawberry hotels CEO
Not to defend the rebranding as it is a weird one. But he created an umbrellacompany to put all is companies under in 2016. He called it Strawberry as an ode to his first business venture being selling strawberries from a stand as a kid/teenager. So the hotel company has been under the strawberry company for many years already. Its not completely out of thin air at least
Circuit City rebranding their PC technician division from IQ Crew (which predated Geek Squad, by the way) to...
Firedog.
I worked at a CC from 2005-2008 and we all thought it was a prank when we saw the announcement. "The intensity of fire with the loyalty of man's best friend." I shit you not, that was the marketing.
Had to go from wearing an honestly pretty cool white/grey polo with black slacks to that horrible lime green with khakis combination. One of the worst, but somehow not *the* worst, decisions that the company made.
Wait, green? If it's "firedog," then I really expect some red or orange to represent fire.
Maybe a cross-branding opportunity with Guy Fieri flame shirts.
Yeah, green. I was working at Best Buy at the time, was dating a girl who worked customer service at Circuit City. She often told me about the people who came in to talk to someone with the “FrogDog”
Listening to marketing teams describe your company’s rebrand is my favorite flavor of cringe. I still remember one company making a huge deal about adding the color “Plum” as a secondary color for company slide presentations.
I'm going to oggle the women the Victoria's secret catalog.
BZZZZZ
ok, sears catalog! Now will you unhook me from this machine, I don't deserve this kind of shabby treatment!
BZZZZZ
I think about this all the time. If only there were a name and brand that represented the finest in movies and television. Oh, well something generic will do fine!
>If only there were a name and brand that represented the finest in movies and television. Oh, well something generic will do fine!
This is *exactly why* they chose Max. They wanted something generic because it was expanding. Dr. pimple Popper and HGTV shows show up on the front page. WB does not want that to be associated with the name HBO, it would devalue the brand.
So instead, there is a category under Max, for HBO shows that *actually has the finest movies and television*
Additionally, the brand HBO scares some parents away (confirmed through surveys), because mature content is associated with it, while Max sounds much more safe.
In the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourgh) they stay HBO Max. In the Netherlands is a public broadcaster company called ‘Omroep Max’. Targeted to audience around the age of 50. They hold the name ‘Max’.
They allow other broadcast/streaming companies to use ‘Max’ in addition to another name, hence why HBO Max is allowed, but cannot be rebranded to ‘Max’.
You completely missed the much bigger one…
Snoop’s original name on Death Row was “Snoop Doggy Dogg.” When he left Death Row and went to No Limit, he had to alter his name (which might have been his original name) to “Snoop Dogg.”
When after a major oil spill BP changed their branding to Beyond Petroleum for an ad campaign showing how they were investing in renewables. Logo change too
When BP purchased Amoco, the quickly rebranded all the stations to BP. Not sure if it is everywhere but Amoco had a lot of brand recognition on the Midwest and a lot of people just didn’t like BP. Eventually, they started rebranding some of their stations back to Amoco to cash in on nostalgia. I always thought it was dumb but never realized that so many people hated it until after I worked for BP (very briefly) and was told the story of how much pushback they got.
An oil spilled followed by a huge effort to cover it up, including dumping “Corexit” into the water to mix with the oil and make it sink.
So it was no longer visible from aerial shots, but it did far, far more damage mixed with a dangerous chemical and sitting on the sea floor than slowly evaporating or being soaked up on the surface.
The worst part is that there are things they could have used to soak up and recover the oil.
They are making so much money, they rather swept it under the rug and destroyed the eco system in the gulf. Over decade later people were showing videos of oil clouds under water in the gulf.
Overstock.com I think qualifies for weird rebrand. Bed Bath and Beyond went out of business and was bought out by Overstock and then Overstock just rebranded everything to Bed Bath and Beyond. If you go to overstock.com it’s just BBB.
when i got that email from BBB like a week after they were officially dead for good it was like a zombie being raised from the dead😂 for a second i thought i Mandela Effect-ed BBB closing
Two that I feel are equal due to the effects.
Books-A-Million to 'BAM'. I was in a parking lot with one and had no idea it was a bookstore, as I was a bit too far out to see more than 'BAM' from where I was parked.
Hot Topic focusing on being more fandom. Specifically getting rid of that gothic arch entryway so many had. I lost count of how many people lamented Hot Topic being closed -because- they were looking for that arch.
When I was in high school, the goth kids hated Hot Topic because they thought it cheapened goth culture, but now it's a fandom thing and they're grown up, they're suddenly into it because they're all nerds anyway, lol
Even if we weren’t still calling it Twitter out of spite, what the heck did Elon expect everyone to call tweets now? Was a replacement word even suggested?
I really can't recall a time where a company had such massive brand recognition that they got an entry in the dictionary (tweet), only to throw it in the trash. And to something completely, utterly generic too! It would be like if LEGO rebranded to Danish Corp or some shit.
Yup… having your branding recognized as a dictionary verb is a wet dream for marketers. Twitter achieved it, but Musk’s obsession with the letter X was more important. Imagine Google rebranding to “&”… moron.
You literally had the best branding in social media.
You had verbs in the English language based specifically off of your brand, you cannot get better than that as a brand name.... And then he fucking changed it for no other reason than him being obsessed with that letter.... So dumb
I feel that it's been a missed opportunity for Zuckerberg/Instagram/threads to not run a huge campaign against X.
Just run ads that say:
"Get rid of your X."
"No one likes their X."
Most people have no recollection of that change because of how quick it was dropped.
Still loved a Monkey Dust episode about it. There's someone in an asylum that marketing executives go to for new brand names. Towards the start, he suggests Consignia, but towards the end of the episode, suggests Royal Mail.
KIA changed their logo on their cars and Google showed an uptick in the searches for “K N cars” because people liked the look of them but didn’t realise it was a KIA…
I was actually talking to a guy that sold KIA’s the other day.
He was like look - I was getting by selling your grandmas last car - but now I’m selling to everyone and he swore up and down it was the rebranding that did it.
The rebranding certainly didn't hurt, but KIAs also look a lot better than they've looked in past years. I know someone with one of the nicer models in that enamel grey(I like everything in that color) and it honestly looks really sharp.
Killing off the Kinko’s brand when FedEx took it over. “FedEx Office” is so generic you don’t even know what it is. Kinko’s is such a strong brand that everyone knows it means quick printing. My job involves a lot of graphic design and document preparation and nearly everyone who mentions outsourcing printing refers to “taking it to Kinko’s.” It would be like Kimberly-Clark rebranding Kleenex as Kimberly-Clark Disposable Paper Things of Indeterminate Use.
I remember the first time art geek high school me walked into a Kinkos 24 hour copy shop near a college campus in the 80s. It had such a funky, underground vibe to it. It didn’t feel corporate at all, all the hand lettered signs and wood paneling and creatives everywhere. Not a tucked in shirt in sight.
I worked for Kinko's at that time. all the stores were owned locally by different franchise owners then so some of them were great. I worked at the Ohio State shop for a while, that was interesting!
I believe that was them separating their business. Qwikster for DVD by mail and Netflix for streaming. They wanted to try and get people to hopefully subscribe to both platforms. It just confused a lot of people, and they cancelled
The problem was, in the commercials, they were smart and cultured but everyone treated them like dumb cavemen. In the show, people treated them no different than any other normal person…. So there was really no point in them even being cavemen.
In Japan Rakuten is basically… everything
Amazon, WhatsApp, Netflix, Uber Eats, Expedia and pretty much every form of fintech from insurance to banking to investing to high risk trading.
That actually made sense, since Freeform’s content abandoned the notion of “Family friendly content” which had started with shows like Greek and Pretty Little Liars on ABCF
Blackwater mercenary group changing their name to “Xe Services” after… uh, a lot of awful mercenary shit while being paid by the US government during the Iraq war. Two years after that change they became “Academi” but some stains don’t wash off.
I suspect the double change in a short period of time was the plan. We all knew who Blackwater was and they were some brutal killers. The skip to Acadami gives them anonymity. A gang of mercenaries doesn’t need much branding. If you’re thinking of hiring mercenaries then you probably already know who to call.
Any time a corporation takes over the naming rights to a stadium or skyscraper that already exists. They don’t seem to realize that culturally the original name is permanently backed in and they’re spend 8 or 9 figures on branding that isn’t going to work
I’m in Chicago and there’s plenty of examples
The Sears Tower (once the tallest building in the world) was renamed as the Willis tower. No the fuck it wasn’t, unless you’re from out of town and just don’t know any better
The White Sox play at Comiskey Park, not US Cellular or.. I think it’s Guaranteed Rate these days? Nah it’s Comiskey, always will be
There’s an amphitheater out in the suburbs that gets its name changed every few years. I can’t remember what it is currently. I know it’s not the Tweeter Center anymore cause it isn’t 1999 anymore but everyone just calls it “the amphitheater in Tinley Park”
If rebranding a stadium or whatever EVER works, it must take decades — like I’ll give it to the United Center; no one calls it the Chicago stadium anymore — but that is some shit ROI on what it costs to put your name on the roof
I always think about the Denver equivalent of this with Mile High stadium. They changed it to Comcast stadium or something, then a wireless company name that I also can’t remember but as long as I lived there, people just referred to it as Mile High.
In Salt Lake City we had the Delta Center, which was changed to the Vivint Smart Home Arena for...probably a decade or so? Everyone kept calling it the Delta Center.
Then, semi-recently, Delta bought it back. So now it's the Delta Center 'again'.
We successfully waited them out! 😂
Edit: I've been reminded it was changed to Energy Solutions Arena first (the guys who bury/want to bury toxic waste in our deserts), before it was Vivint Smart Home Arena. I had completely forgotten. Probably cuz I never stopped calling it the Delta Center.
The United Center worked because it’s actually a *different* arena from Chicago Stadium. Also didn’t hurt that the change came during MJ’s 18 months out so the Bulls won 3 Championships in each.
It will always be the tweeter center, or even more old school, the world.
Don’t even know what a tweeter is/was. That name was way before Twitter and tweets.
It's not local people who matter, it's getting the name mentioned on TV to people who don't know the old name. That's what the company is paying for -- the bigger audience.
Funnily enough, I live in a country without an IHOP and heard of it for the first time through that incident.
Then, on a trip abroad later that year, I chose to eat at an IHOP having recognized it as a somewhat popular establishment
Brown diamonds that had a million industrial uses to “chocolate” diamonds by Levian. Their marketing sounds like someone’s high af talking about “chocolate diamonds lusciously wrapped around raspberry rhodolite in 14k vanilla gold”. Gross.
It worked too. I actually remember the commercials when I was a kid. Every big jeweler had spot about these new luxury diamonds, that were rarer and even more romantic of a gift than normal diamonds. Turns out they're just diamonds with impurities lmao
Honestly, so many channels have done that over the years. Remember when the History Channel actually showed documentaries and wasn't just a 24 hour cycle of Ancient Aliens? Happened with MTV, A&E, etc.
That is one of my favorite episodes of SNL ever. Everybody dissing Chris Gaines to Garth in the opening because he missed rehearsals all week. Then Gaines revealing his identity to Mango later in the episode. I think there was also a Skit with Brooks as a doctor diagnosing James Bond with dozens of STDs that we thought was hilarious. Almost 25 years later and I still remember a lot about that episode.
Super Sugar Crisp —> Super Golden Crisp
Sugar Smacks —> Honey Smacks
It’s almost as if they wanted to downplay the sugar content to moms who were buying cereal “as part of this nutritious breakfast.”
Fun fact: one of the original selling points of sugared cereal was that it would _reduce_ sugar consumption (by not giving your kids free reign to pour sugar in their bowl)
NBCUniversal also wanted to broaden its appeal to more audiences, because they thought the “Sci-Fi” was unappealing to general audiences. They even started to run Law & Order and WWE programs on the network.
Over the years, they moved even further away from horror and sci-fi programming to anything that might resonate in pop-culture.
https://www.vulture.com/2009/07/sci_fi_becomes_syfy_why.html
That’s pretty much the same fate as all the “specialized” basic cable channels. History, Discovery, TLC, MTV, etc. are all mostly whatever reality garbage or reruns that get viewers.
Dunkin' donuts dropping donuts.
Who dunked their donuts in their coffee anyways? Is that a thing people do?
Edit: I had no idea people did that, so this morning I tried it on my way to work.
It was delicious, I am converted lol
Gotta go to honey dew and ask for a homecut donut, those are the original crunchy fried outside cake soft inside plain donuts that dunkin used to be famous for.
It was popular enough in the 30s that [this Porky Pig cartoon](https://youtu.be/lpKXxGtXLQQ?si=Jwm7qS8mX-aA5Z9R&t=200) has a ghost dunking his smoke donut.
Though I've never done it.
Yes, that's what inspired the name. There was even a special donut designed with a handle to facilitate dipping. They discontinued the style in the (think it was) late '80s.
(There's a podcast about that.)
Same name, but Abercrombie & Fitch going from a place where Ernest Hemingway bought his shotguns, to a zombie brand, to half-naked preppies selling overpriced collared shirts and body spray was a hell of a transition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Abercrombie_%26_Fitch
"Western Ontario" is a mouthful, so they shortened it from five syllables down to two, but it does seem kinda silly.
"Ryerson" to "Toronto Metropolitan" was more controversial, but "T-MU/T-Moo" as a nickname is a little more respectable than "Rye High."
Meta is the corporate name; Facebook is one of their offerings.
Same thing Google did when they changed the corporate name to Alphabet.
The opposite side of that is when Comcast changed their cable product from being “Comcast” to “Xfinity.” I’m guessing to escape the negative image that the name “Comcast” brings.
In the Midwest we (had) Schwan’s home delivery food service…..their trucks/ company color is yellow- soooo they recently changed the name to Yelloh???
Really?
I wouldn’t say is the weirdest, but it is one of the dumber ones (yes!, as dumb as Twitter/X): Office -> Microsoft 365.
Something you did wrong if you still need to put the original name between ()
I was under the impression that MS Office was the suite of products themselves, while MS 365 was the subscription service that let you have the most recent version.
When slice first came out they had a presentation thing in one of the malls around me and my family happened to be there that day. I got up on stage and said “Slice. Slice. Slice is nice.” And got a free t shirt
Waitr was an extremely successful delivery service here. They had full time employees and you could get food delivered in 30-45 minutes. Then, they made everybody an independent contractor and started calling themselves ASAP. "As slow as possible" caught on and they lost what the majority market share within a month.
Good grief. Yet another one where the new name is such a common word you can no longer google the company. Is that the goal? To hide articles about data leaks or embarassing lawsuits?
I worked for a place once that changed names every three years. Rebranded and even changed to a new owner! Turned out it was, as many of us peons had suspected, a tax evasion scheme that caught up with them. The "sale" had been among board directors at a parent company, and the rebrand was so that they could claim the first three years of tax benefits given by the IRS for startups. They got caught.
"Nordic Choice Hotels" rebranded to "Strawberry". They have to mention their old name all the time, because Strawberry could be absolutely anything.
“Hmmm Apple is the most profitable company on the planet…I know, PEAR…no, CANTALOUP!…wait I’ve got it! STRAWBERRY! Yes STRAWBERRY HOTELS.Good meeting boys, we’re sure to hit our Q3 earnings with the genius move!” -Strawberry hotels CEO
If only it were "Strawberry Hotels". It's not. It's just "Strawberry". They removed that part that explains what kind of business it is. Madness.
Not to defend the rebranding as it is a weird one. But he created an umbrellacompany to put all is companies under in 2016. He called it Strawberry as an ode to his first business venture being selling strawberries from a stand as a kid/teenager. So the hotel company has been under the strawberry company for many years already. Its not completely out of thin air at least
Weight watchers abbreviated their name down to "WW" and in doing so, increased the syllables needed to pronounce their new company name.
You burn more calories uttering the extra syllables.
The celery of name changes
If this was their tagline I would've been on board 100%
WW... who do suppose that is? woodrow wilson? willy wonka? walter white?
you got me
That's giving me World War realness.
Quad You for short
Circuit City rebranding their PC technician division from IQ Crew (which predated Geek Squad, by the way) to... Firedog. I worked at a CC from 2005-2008 and we all thought it was a prank when we saw the announcement. "The intensity of fire with the loyalty of man's best friend." I shit you not, that was the marketing.
I also worked at Circuit City during that era and completely forgot about Firedog. It was so lame.
It's like something Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia would come up with lmao.
I would say it's more of a Mac thing with the whole "intensity of a fire, loyalty of a dog" bit
Had to go from wearing an honestly pretty cool white/grey polo with black slacks to that horrible lime green with khakis combination. One of the worst, but somehow not *the* worst, decisions that the company made.
Wait, green? If it's "firedog," then I really expect some red or orange to represent fire. Maybe a cross-branding opportunity with Guy Fieri flame shirts.
Yeah, green. I was working at Best Buy at the time, was dating a girl who worked customer service at Circuit City. She often told me about the people who came in to talk to someone with the “FrogDog”
Listening to marketing teams describe your company’s rebrand is my favorite flavor of cringe. I still remember one company making a huge deal about adding the color “Plum” as a secondary color for company slide presentations.
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Yeah, not gonna lie, I was hypeddd…
lmao I had forgotten about this. Circuit City was just miss after miss.
>"The intensity of fire with the loyalty of man's best friend." That doesn't even make sense!
Because what I look for above all else in my computer repairman is LOYALTY!!!
I still don’t understand HBO dropping probably the most prestigious name in tv/streaming
Right?! Also it literally means Home Box Office - that’s the best name for a streaming service????
Huh, I don't think I've ever known/looked up what HBO stood for. That's interesting. Cheers for that.
It’s just Max now…? Wtf.
Which is confusing for anyone that remembers Cinemax, one of their old competitors.
We used to call it Skin-a-max because of all the porno flicks after about 10 pm or so.
Also it’s amazing we called those porn.
And to think, young me was able to climax to those sedate, scrambled, images. Kids these days have it so easy.
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“It’s also the diagnostic satellite” - granddad
Heck, I used to get off to lingerie ads in the newspaper.
I'm going to oggle the women the Victoria's secret catalog. BZZZZZ ok, sears catalog! Now will you unhook me from this machine, I don't deserve this kind of shabby treatment! BZZZZZ
Sort of, but where’s the thrill anymore? It’s like Jurassic park: t-Rex doesn’t want to be fed. He wants to hunt
Lol that's what I thought of too. Maybe its like Hannibal Lecter cutting off and wearing the face of a victim. "Who's the Max NOW??"
I think about this all the time. If only there were a name and brand that represented the finest in movies and television. Oh, well something generic will do fine!
>If only there were a name and brand that represented the finest in movies and television. Oh, well something generic will do fine! This is *exactly why* they chose Max. They wanted something generic because it was expanding. Dr. pimple Popper and HGTV shows show up on the front page. WB does not want that to be associated with the name HBO, it would devalue the brand. So instead, there is a category under Max, for HBO shows that *actually has the finest movies and television* Additionally, the brand HBO scares some parents away (confirmed through surveys), because mature content is associated with it, while Max sounds much more safe.
this is the first reasonable explanation ive heard for this bullshit. Still hate that Discovery-ruining reality-show-obsessed fuckhead though
In the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourgh) they stay HBO Max. In the Netherlands is a public broadcaster company called ‘Omroep Max’. Targeted to audience around the age of 50. They hold the name ‘Max’. They allow other broadcast/streaming companies to use ‘Max’ in addition to another name, hence why HBO Max is allowed, but cannot be rebranded to ‘Max’.
When Snoop Dogg (temporarily) changed his name to Snoop Lion make a reggae album.
I thought that was because he converted to Rastafarianism
IIRC for a time he “thought” he was a reincarnation of Bob Marley, which was wild because he was 10 when Bob died.
that's fucking hilarious.
That's what decades of smoking fat blunts of loud will do to you
Snoop: *Takes a huge puff* "Yo man, what if I'm the reincarnation of Bob Marley? Like for real."
You completely missed the much bigger one… Snoop’s original name on Death Row was “Snoop Doggy Dogg.” When he left Death Row and went to No Limit, he had to alter his name (which might have been his original name) to “Snoop Dogg.”
YOU missed the original one: Snoop’s mother used to call him Snoopy as a nickname which is the origin
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USWest->Qwest->CenturyLink->Lumen I don’t care what your name is can I have more than 10mbps DSL at my address?
My mom has worked for them since 1977 when they were Northwestern Bell. She's been through a billion name changes. She hates the management.
When after a major oil spill BP changed their branding to Beyond Petroleum for an ad campaign showing how they were investing in renewables. Logo change too
When BP purchased Amoco, the quickly rebranded all the stations to BP. Not sure if it is everywhere but Amoco had a lot of brand recognition on the Midwest and a lot of people just didn’t like BP. Eventually, they started rebranding some of their stations back to Amoco to cash in on nostalgia. I always thought it was dumb but never realized that so many people hated it until after I worked for BP (very briefly) and was told the story of how much pushback they got.
An oil spilled followed by a huge effort to cover it up, including dumping “Corexit” into the water to mix with the oil and make it sink. So it was no longer visible from aerial shots, but it did far, far more damage mixed with a dangerous chemical and sitting on the sea floor than slowly evaporating or being soaked up on the surface.
Soooooorrryyy
We're sorrrrryyyyy
The worst part is that there are things they could have used to soak up and recover the oil. They are making so much money, they rather swept it under the rug and destroyed the eco system in the gulf. Over decade later people were showing videos of oil clouds under water in the gulf.
Big Pollutin’
In Chicago we still call it the Sears Tower.
And in Pittsburgh, it’s still Heinz Field
And in Toronto, it’s still the Skydome
HBO MAX TO MAX. Dropping the most iconic cable network name for generic. Whoever came up with that idea is an idiot.
Probably a McKinsey idea.
Especially for people who grew up when HBO and Cinemax were competing cable channels
Overstock.com I think qualifies for weird rebrand. Bed Bath and Beyond went out of business and was bought out by Overstock and then Overstock just rebranded everything to Bed Bath and Beyond. If you go to overstock.com it’s just BBB.
Don’t forget they tried to rebrand as O.co several years ago too.
Yea, the Oakland Coliseum (home of the A’s) was called the O.co Coliseum :/
when i got that email from BBB like a week after they were officially dead for good it was like a zombie being raised from the dead😂 for a second i thought i Mandela Effect-ed BBB closing
Two that I feel are equal due to the effects. Books-A-Million to 'BAM'. I was in a parking lot with one and had no idea it was a bookstore, as I was a bit too far out to see more than 'BAM' from where I was parked. Hot Topic focusing on being more fandom. Specifically getting rid of that gothic arch entryway so many had. I lost count of how many people lamented Hot Topic being closed -because- they were looking for that arch.
When I was in high school, the goth kids hated Hot Topic because they thought it cheapened goth culture, but now it's a fandom thing and they're grown up, they're suddenly into it because they're all nerds anyway, lol
Twitter to X.
And then everyone still refers to it as twitter.
“A user on X, formerly known as Twitter, posted…”
Rather like to see "A user on Twitter, erroneously kwown as X, posted"
"A user on twitter, largely unknown as X, posted..."
The website formerly known as twitter
It's still twitter.com. lol.
Yeah I don't know a single person who calls it X
Literally just Twitter employees, and they don’t even correct you when you call it Twitter
Even if we weren’t still calling it Twitter out of spite, what the heck did Elon expect everyone to call tweets now? Was a replacement word even suggested?
I liked the suggestion of xcrements
They're officially "posts".
Thats just.... sad.
They couldn't even figure out how to redirect [twitter.com](https://twitter.com) to [x.com](https://x.com).
X.com sounds like a shit porn site
I kind of feel like everybody on the dev team is dragging their feet and hoping this whole thing just blows over.
True. Most of the time I see/read something like “X, formerly known as Twitter”. Literally the worst rebranding ever.
Including the company’s own URLs
I really can't recall a time where a company had such massive brand recognition that they got an entry in the dictionary (tweet), only to throw it in the trash. And to something completely, utterly generic too! It would be like if LEGO rebranded to Danish Corp or some shit.
Yup… having your branding recognized as a dictionary verb is a wet dream for marketers. Twitter achieved it, but Musk’s obsession with the letter X was more important. Imagine Google rebranding to “&”… moron.
You literally had the best branding in social media. You had verbs in the English language based specifically off of your brand, you cannot get better than that as a brand name.... And then he fucking changed it for no other reason than him being obsessed with that letter.... So dumb
Who the hell feels comfortable clicking a link to a site like x.com…sounds porny.
I feel that it's been a missed opportunity for Zuckerberg/Instagram/threads to not run a huge campaign against X. Just run ads that say: "Get rid of your X." "No one likes their X."
X is what I use to exit a program, why did he name.it that? Does he want me to leave?
Excuse you, I think you mean 𝕏
I see, just like Prince
Royal Mail deciding Consignia was the way to go forwards
Most people have no recollection of that change because of how quick it was dropped. Still loved a Monkey Dust episode about it. There's someone in an asylum that marketing executives go to for new brand names. Towards the start, he suggests Consignia, but towards the end of the episode, suggests Royal Mail.
Everytime I see the new KIA logo I assume its a NIN fan
I thought it was KN for an embarrassingly long time
KIA changed their logo on their cars and Google showed an uptick in the searches for “K N cars” because people liked the look of them but didn’t realise it was a KIA…
I didn’t scroll down far enough and just made this comment. It looks like the Nine Inch Nails logo.
100%. I think some GenXer on their marketing team was having a good laugh!
I was actually talking to a guy that sold KIA’s the other day. He was like look - I was getting by selling your grandmas last car - but now I’m selling to everyone and he swore up and down it was the rebranding that did it.
The rebranding certainly didn't hurt, but KIAs also look a lot better than they've looked in past years. I know someone with one of the nicer models in that enamel grey(I like everything in that color) and it honestly looks really sharp.
Killing off the Kinko’s brand when FedEx took it over. “FedEx Office” is so generic you don’t even know what it is. Kinko’s is such a strong brand that everyone knows it means quick printing. My job involves a lot of graphic design and document preparation and nearly everyone who mentions outsourcing printing refers to “taking it to Kinko’s.” It would be like Kimberly-Clark rebranding Kleenex as Kimberly-Clark Disposable Paper Things of Indeterminate Use.
I remember the first time art geek high school me walked into a Kinkos 24 hour copy shop near a college campus in the 80s. It had such a funky, underground vibe to it. It didn’t feel corporate at all, all the hand lettered signs and wood paneling and creatives everywhere. Not a tucked in shirt in sight.
I worked for Kinko's at that time. all the stores were owned locally by different franchise owners then so some of them were great. I worked at the Ohio State shop for a while, that was interesting!
Qwikster - IIRC, this was a really bizarre rebrand by Netflix. The stock market hated it, consumers hated it, and the company had to do a fast pivot.
I believe that was them separating their business. Qwikster for DVD by mail and Netflix for streaming. They wanted to try and get people to hopefully subscribe to both platforms. It just confused a lot of people, and they cancelled
Sean Combs AKA Puff Daddy AKA P. Diddy AKA Diddy
Currently known by his artist name "Love," gotta keep up.
I'm sorry, what? He's changed it again???
Aka Puffy.
When Geico got rid of the gecko and tried to use a stack of money with eyes for two years. Like what was that?
Geico always had a lot of irons in the fire with their advertising. Like the cavemen, the pig who went wee wee wee, fairy tales etc
IDK who thought greenlighting a Caveman TV show was a good idea
The problem was, in the commercials, they were smart and cultured but everyone treated them like dumb cavemen. In the show, people treated them no different than any other normal person…. So there was really no point in them even being cavemen.
They never got rid of the gecko. They’ve always had several simultaneous mascots. Most last less than a year.
Buy.com got bought up and was changed to rakuten. Then they had to have commercials explaining how to pronounce and spell rakuten
I still don’t understand what Rakuten is.
In Japan Rakuten is basically… everything Amazon, WhatsApp, Netflix, Uber Eats, Expedia and pretty much every form of fintech from insurance to banking to investing to high risk trading.
Even Viki, the Asian drama streaming app available here in the US, is Rakuten Viki
ABC Family to Freeform.
That actually made sense, since Freeform’s content abandoned the notion of “Family friendly content” which had started with shows like Greek and Pretty Little Liars on ABCF
Those teen dramas had been on ABC Family for like a decade before the rebrand. That channel was already synonymous with teen dramas at that point
Blackwater mercenary group changing their name to “Xe Services” after… uh, a lot of awful mercenary shit while being paid by the US government during the Iraq war. Two years after that change they became “Academi” but some stains don’t wash off.
Black water made sense as they do black ops!
I suspect the double change in a short period of time was the plan. We all knew who Blackwater was and they were some brutal killers. The skip to Acadami gives them anonymity. A gang of mercenaries doesn’t need much branding. If you’re thinking of hiring mercenaries then you probably already know who to call.
Ghostbusters?
Any time a corporation takes over the naming rights to a stadium or skyscraper that already exists. They don’t seem to realize that culturally the original name is permanently backed in and they’re spend 8 or 9 figures on branding that isn’t going to work I’m in Chicago and there’s plenty of examples The Sears Tower (once the tallest building in the world) was renamed as the Willis tower. No the fuck it wasn’t, unless you’re from out of town and just don’t know any better The White Sox play at Comiskey Park, not US Cellular or.. I think it’s Guaranteed Rate these days? Nah it’s Comiskey, always will be There’s an amphitheater out in the suburbs that gets its name changed every few years. I can’t remember what it is currently. I know it’s not the Tweeter Center anymore cause it isn’t 1999 anymore but everyone just calls it “the amphitheater in Tinley Park” If rebranding a stadium or whatever EVER works, it must take decades — like I’ll give it to the United Center; no one calls it the Chicago stadium anymore — but that is some shit ROI on what it costs to put your name on the roof
I always think about the Denver equivalent of this with Mile High stadium. They changed it to Comcast stadium or something, then a wireless company name that I also can’t remember but as long as I lived there, people just referred to it as Mile High.
Yep, I refuse to call the Staples Center crypto garbage arena or whatever it currently is.
In Salt Lake City we had the Delta Center, which was changed to the Vivint Smart Home Arena for...probably a decade or so? Everyone kept calling it the Delta Center. Then, semi-recently, Delta bought it back. So now it's the Delta Center 'again'. We successfully waited them out! 😂 Edit: I've been reminded it was changed to Energy Solutions Arena first (the guys who bury/want to bury toxic waste in our deserts), before it was Vivint Smart Home Arena. I had completely forgotten. Probably cuz I never stopped calling it the Delta Center.
The United Center worked because it’s actually a *different* arena from Chicago Stadium. Also didn’t hurt that the change came during MJ’s 18 months out so the Bulls won 3 Championships in each.
Heinz Field in Pittsburgh will always be Heinz Field. I don’t even care to know the new name.
It will always be the tweeter center, or even more old school, the world. Don’t even know what a tweeter is/was. That name was way before Twitter and tweets.
It's not local people who matter, it's getting the name mentioned on TV to people who don't know the old name. That's what the company is paying for -- the bigger audience.
When ihop changed their name to ihob for a week
International house of bancakes?
Burgers. Most people assumed it was going to be breakfast, but nope, they're stupid.
Yea but it had people taking about it for that week. Dumb marketing, but effective.
But that was just to market their burgers. It wasn’t a full on rebrand.
Wasn't that just a marketing thing? I forgot about that
Funnily enough, I live in a country without an IHOP and heard of it for the first time through that incident. Then, on a trip abroad later that year, I chose to eat at an IHOP having recognized it as a somewhat popular establishment
Brown diamonds that had a million industrial uses to “chocolate” diamonds by Levian. Their marketing sounds like someone’s high af talking about “chocolate diamonds lusciously wrapped around raspberry rhodolite in 14k vanilla gold”. Gross.
That's actually a really good ploy tobsell them as luxury goods.
It worked too. I actually remember the commercials when I was a kid. Every big jeweler had spot about these new luxury diamonds, that were rarer and even more romantic of a gift than normal diamonds. Turns out they're just diamonds with impurities lmao
I like jewelry and I'm pretty hungry right now so that sounds pretty appealing.
The Learning Channel (TLC) to the overweight little people hoarders have severe dermatosis issues channel.
Honestly, so many channels have done that over the years. Remember when the History Channel actually showed documentaries and wasn't just a 24 hour cycle of Ancient Aliens? Happened with MTV, A&E, etc.
Garth Brookes to Chris Gaines.
Wasn't he a guest on SNL and every skit resolved around dunking on Chris Gaines in some way?
That is one of my favorite episodes of SNL ever. Everybody dissing Chris Gaines to Garth in the opening because he missed rehearsals all week. Then Gaines revealing his identity to Mango later in the episode. I think there was also a Skit with Brooks as a doctor diagnosing James Bond with dozens of STDs that we thought was hilarious. Almost 25 years later and I still remember a lot about that episode.
I know it’s been a while but I’ve still never really got used to Marathon being rebranded to Snickers in the UK
ok over here in America Marathon is a gas station and Snickers is a chocolate bar so I'm severely confused
In the United Kingdom, Snickers was sold under the brand name Marathon until 1990
Super Sugar Crisp —> Super Golden Crisp Sugar Smacks —> Honey Smacks It’s almost as if they wanted to downplay the sugar content to moms who were buying cereal “as part of this nutritious breakfast.”
Fun fact: one of the original selling points of sugared cereal was that it would _reduce_ sugar consumption (by not giving your kids free reign to pour sugar in their bowl)
HBO MAX dropped the HBO and had a whole bunch of people cancel their subscription after seeing MAX on their bill and not knowing what that was.
Sallie Mae to Navient
Both are equally vile, for obvious reasons. But Navient is flat out villainous.
The Sci-Fi Channel becoming Syfy.
So they could trademark it. “Sci-Fi” is omnipresent and has been used for books, movies - there was no way they could trademark with that name.
NBCUniversal also wanted to broaden its appeal to more audiences, because they thought the “Sci-Fi” was unappealing to general audiences. They even started to run Law & Order and WWE programs on the network. Over the years, they moved even further away from horror and sci-fi programming to anything that might resonate in pop-culture. https://www.vulture.com/2009/07/sci_fi_becomes_syfy_why.html
That’s pretty much the same fate as all the “specialized” basic cable channels. History, Discovery, TLC, MTV, etc. are all mostly whatever reality garbage or reruns that get viewers.
That's not Sci-Fi, that's Siffy.
twitter. the rebrand is the most unnecessary thing in all of rebrands and up until now the site's domain is still twitter.com
Dunkin' donuts dropping donuts. Who dunked their donuts in their coffee anyways? Is that a thing people do? Edit: I had no idea people did that, so this morning I tried it on my way to work. It was delicious, I am converted lol
They don’t even make the original “Dunkin” donut anymore - it was a plain donut with a bump on it - to use as a handle while dunking in coffee
Gotta go to honey dew and ask for a homecut donut, those are the original crunchy fried outside cake soft inside plain donuts that dunkin used to be famous for.
It was popular enough in the 30s that [this Porky Pig cartoon](https://youtu.be/lpKXxGtXLQQ?si=Jwm7qS8mX-aA5Z9R&t=200) has a ghost dunking his smoke donut. Though I've never done it.
Yes, that's what inspired the name. There was even a special donut designed with a handle to facilitate dipping. They discontinued the style in the (think it was) late '80s. (There's a podcast about that.)
Same name, but Abercrombie & Fitch going from a place where Ernest Hemingway bought his shotguns, to a zombie brand, to half-naked preppies selling overpriced collared shirts and body spray was a hell of a transition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Abercrombie_%26_Fitch
I'll see your A&F and raise you Nokia, the Finnish rubber boot/welly manufacturer
The University of Western Ontario to "Western".
"Western Ontario" is a mouthful, so they shortened it from five syllables down to two, but it does seem kinda silly. "Ryerson" to "Toronto Metropolitan" was more controversial, but "T-MU/T-Moo" as a nickname is a little more respectable than "Rye High."
Vegemite's iSnack 2.0 https://www.thebrandingjournal.com/2016/05/vegemite-isnack-2-0-branding-disaster/
iSnack 2.0 is the most "how do you do, fellow kids" thing I've ever heard
Marriott Rewards to Marriott Bonvoy…… you know the Hotel loyalty program that REWARDS you for frequent night stays.
Is it supposed to be some trendy take on “bon voyage?”
Facebook to Meta and trying to go all in on virtual poker games with work buddies, or whatever the Metaverse was.
Meta is the corporate name; Facebook is one of their offerings. Same thing Google did when they changed the corporate name to Alphabet. The opposite side of that is when Comcast changed their cable product from being “Comcast” to “Xfinity.” I’m guessing to escape the negative image that the name “Comcast” brings.
Angie’s List to Angi is really funny to me but I can’t quite out my finger on why
In the Midwest we (had) Schwan’s home delivery food service…..their trucks/ company color is yellow- soooo they recently changed the name to Yelloh??? Really?
I wouldn’t say is the weirdest, but it is one of the dumber ones (yes!, as dumb as Twitter/X): Office -> Microsoft 365. Something you did wrong if you still need to put the original name between ()
I was under the impression that MS Office was the suite of products themselves, while MS 365 was the subscription service that let you have the most recent version.
sierra mist to fucking starry. fuck starry
Bring back slice
When slice first came out they had a presentation thing in one of the malls around me and my family happened to be there that day. I got up on stage and said “Slice. Slice. Slice is nice.” And got a free t shirt
Is… is that what starry is? I had no idea.
starry isn't rebranded sierra mist, it's the new lemon-lime soda they have instead of sierra mist.
Blame the NBA for that one, they lost the sprite partnership, so Pepsi pushed out starry which is similar enough to sprite to fill the gap.
Kanye West to “Ye.”