Could you imagine any brand manager in the world throwing away one of the most recognizable symbols on the web, and all the brand equity an familiarity with terms that goes with that? You'd be laughed out of the room. But I'm sure someone has already Xs'd about it, with many ReXs and Rx's following up.
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My Twitter followers have dropped by 2,000. I know many here hate the platform and criticize those of us who think otherwise, but I’ve used it for years as a news feed and to follow people whose opinions are of interest and post the news I’m interested in. I’m not leaving Twitter, although Musk changing the name to X (what a stupid idea) is actually thinking that one day I may hit the door.
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Twitter had many problems before Musk took it over, but at least it was still usable, and a place where you could look to a blue check to at least know the person wasn't some trolling rando. Now all the parts of Twitter that made it tolerable are totally gone ,and I don't really see why anyone would cling to it at this point. It's gotten worse every day since Musk took over, and I just can't see it to improve in any way, given his goals.
Could you imagine any brand manager in the world throwing away one of the most recognizable symbols on the web, and all the brand equity an familiarity with terms that goes with that? You'd be laughed out of the room. But I'm sure someone has already Xs'd about it, with many ReXs and Rx's following up.
Companies do this from time to time and just because you don't like the change doesn't necessarily mean it is a stupid decision or laughable from a branding perspective. Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC, Weight Watchers became WW, British Petroleum became BP. In other cases the companies made an even bigger brand departure like Johnson & Johnson becoming Kenvue or Aunt Jemima becoming Pearl Milling.
Companies do this from time to time and just because you don't like the change doesn't necessarily mean it is a stupid decision or laughable from a branding perspective. Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC, Weight Watchers became WW, British Petroleum became BP. In other cases the companies made an even bigger brand departure like Johnson & Johnson becoming Kenvue or Aunt Jemima becoming Pearl Milling.
All those first ones kept the brand. It's pretty obvious change from old to new. J&J spun off their consumer products, so a new name makes sense. And Aunt Jemima? Why even bring that up? LOL.
All those first ones kept the brand. It's pretty obvious change from old to new. J&J spun off their consumer products, so a new name makes sense. And Aunt Jemima? Why even bring that up? LOL.
BP was a complete rebranding effort to position themselves as a global energy firm that is focused on sustainability and is "beyond petroleum." They did not keep their old brand and apparently it was an effort that cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Companies do this from time to time and just because you don't like the change doesn't necessarily mean it is a stupid decision or laughable from a branding perspective. Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC, Weight Watchers became WW, British Petroleum became BP. In other cases the companies made an even bigger brand departure like Johnson & Johnson becoming Kenvue or Aunt Jemima becoming Pearl Milling.
Did you bring up Aunt Jemima as an example of a company willingly changing their branding?
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The name “Aunt Jemima,” long criticized as a racist caricature of a Black woman stemming from slavery, will be replaced with the Pearl Milling Company name and logo on the former brand’s new packaging, according to parent company PepsiCo.
Also, the bulk of your examples are not brand changes, just going with initials while keeping the same brand name. This is not what Twitter has done.
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Twitter's X's new logo is just the Unicode character for "Mathematical Double-Struck Capital X" (U+1D54F), which almost surely means it can't be registered as a trademark. Elon is such a business genius.
BP was a complete rebranding effort to position themselves as a global energy firm that is focused on sustainability and is "beyond petroleum." They did not keep their old brand and apparently it was an effort that cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Sure, companies re-brand occasionally, they don't throw it all away. They still kept their corporate colours, and their logo was already "BP". Everyone already called it that. They just tried to get cleaver with the re-branding, and it didn't work. Which is preciously why companies should be very careful when they do these sorts of moves. This wasn't a careful move, it was Musk finally able to fulfil his teenage wish of X company.
The fact that they didn't even do a cursory search of their logo, even in use on their own site, is a major bumble. This isn't the Alberta War Room stealing someone's logo, it's the richest man in the world. It's embarrassing.
Yeah, switching to an abbreviated form of their old name doesn't seem like an overly big change. Like Royal Bank changing its' branding to RBC. This is like if British Petroleum changed its name to X.
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Twitter's X's new logo is just the Unicode character for "Mathematical Double-Struck Capital X" (U+1D54F), which almost surely means it can't be registered as a trademark. Elon is such a business genius.
Companies do this from time to time and just because you don't like the change doesn't necessarily mean it is a stupid decision or laughable from a branding perspective. Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC, Weight Watchers became WW, British Petroleum became BP.
I don't think those are really comparable
Spoiler!
Similarly BP was using "BP" as their logo since the 20s. In both cases the name change was just adopting the colloquial name as the company name. Hardly a major brand change.
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In other cases the companies made an even bigger brand departure like Johnson & Johnson becoming Kenvue or Aunt Jemima becoming Pearl Milling.
J&J isn't becoming Kenvue, it's putting a branch of their current company under the Kenvue banner and splitting it off, but Johnson & Johnson is still a company and is the parent of Kenvue. Cimilar to DowDupont spinning off their agscience division as Corteva.
Now if you want a confusing branding shakeup/spinoffs/departures, the Kraft/Mondelez/Kraft Food/Kraft Heinz rabbit hole containes the intricate web you're looking for
Yeah, switching to an abbreviated form of their old name doesn't seem like an overly big change. Like Royal Bank changing its' branding to RBC. This is like if British Petroleum changed its name to X.
But X is taken. I think Y is available.
I think changing your platform’s name to X is monumentally stupid, but I’m not a billionaire so what do I know?
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KFC is also a bad example because they basically had to. Who wants to brag about "fried" food in the 90s (when the name changed)? Like, we were all worried about saturated fats and fried food was the boogeyman. It was really the start of people being at least a little more concerned about the types of food they were eating, even if they didn't do anything about it except to eat more. But having "fried" in your name was basically toxic and getting worse. It was a totally logical and reasonable change, plus they kept the style and branding of the restaurants the same. It's not like they took the colonel off the bucket, either. Twitter going to X and ditching the bird is so dumb lol.
