Famous Rebrands

With the rebranding of a big business often costing in excess of $1 million, it’s essential that the rebrand is successful. The public become so used to a product or brand operating under a certain name that changes can take a little getting used to. There are many reasons why a company may wish to rebrand, including mergers and brand uniformity. Our latest infographic takes a look at some of the most noticeable rebrands of the past 100 years.

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Following a merger with two other companies, the 1911 founded Computing Tabulating Recording Company became International Business Machines Corporation. In a similar move, a merger saw the American Messenger Company, founded in Seattle in 1907, change its name to UPS. Meanwhile, some rebrands are merely clever shortenings of an established name, for example gaming giant Sega was initially called Service Games when established in Honolulu in 1940. Whilst mergers can inspire a rebrand, so too can a split! Following its separation from Arthur Andersen, Andersen Consulting eventually took the name Accenture, a portmanteau for ‘accent on the future’.

However, sometimes more drastic action is needed and a brand decides on a complete overhaul. This was an idea adopted by fast-food retailer Subway, which at its inception in 1965 bore the name Pete’s Super Submarines, after one of its founders – Peter Buck. In 1971, 7 years after it was founded, Blue Ribbon Sports decided it was time for a change, choosing to take its new name from the Greek goddess of victory – Nike. In a drawn out process, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, the 1931 founded Datsun brand finally became Nissan in the early 1980s, a move that took Nissan several years to recover from.

The ‘Have a break…have a Kit Kat’ slogan wouldn’t have been quite so catchy should the biscuit have kept the name given to it in 1935 – Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisp. Similarly, answering ‘what would you like?’ with ‘Brad’s Drink’, seems comical, however in 1893 that’s what you would have called Pepsi. On the other hand, creating a universal brand was behind the1990 decision to rename what chocoholics in the UK and Ireland knew as Marathon to Snickers. A move echoed by the changing of Opal Fruits to Starburst (the former name originally chosen by a competition winner), beauty brand Oil of Ulay to Olay, cleaning product Jif to Cif and kitchen roll Bounty to Plenty.

After a dispute with the World Wide Fund for Nature, who also operated under the WWF acronym, 2002 saw the World Wrestling Federation change its name to World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. and operate under the acronym WWE.

As our infographic shows, a rebrand can be anything from changing a ‘J’ to a ‘C’ to a drastic multi-million overhaul. While some name changes might have taken a while to get used to, most of them are now household names.

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-21/behind-the-birth-death-and-re-birth-of-datsun