Why rename a company?
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Facebook is not the first company to change its brand name. Earlier in 2016, Google rebranded itself and Alphabet, under which search engine platform Google and its subsidiaries are currently functioning. In 2016,
Snapchat rebranded itself and named it
Snap Inc. On the lines of this, Facebook is also going to re-brand it. In this case, Facebook and its subsidiaries like Instagram and WhatsApp will operate under a new brand name. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had hinted at this from his annual Connect Conference on October 28.
Many, many companies have renamed themselves over the years. Some do it to escape bad press, says Shore, such as cigarette company Philip Morris changing its holding company name to Altria Group in 2003.
Some companies change their name because they’ve created spin offs. PepsiCo’s restaurant division, which owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC, wanted a new name, so Shore created Yum! Brands for them.
Some companies do it because the names have negative connotations.
Kentucky Fried Chicken rebranded to
KFC, allegedly because of unhealthy perceptions around the word “fried.”
Sugar Pops became
Corn Pops, because parents were nervous about the sugar. It’s also happened with more pedestrian products.
Rapeseed oil became
canola oil. The Chinese
gooseberry became the
kiwi. Patagonian toothfish became Chilean sea bass.
Some companies do it for legal reasons, like
Anderson Consulting, which Shore helped rename
Accenture. Originally, people said the name sounded too much like “denture,” but over time, the name stuck.
Some companies just do it because they’re looking for a newer, fresher name.
Federal Express rebranded to
FedEx, because that’s what people called it anyway, and because having “federal” in the title had negative connotations in Latin American countries, says Shore.
But companies don’t always change their names. After the 1982 Tylenol poisoning, Shore says Johnson & Johnson made a strategic decision to not change the Tylenol name, just as Exxon made a strategic decision not to change the Exxon name after their catastrophic oil spill in 1989 with the For a while, oil company
BP, which originally stood for
British Petroleum, was rebranded as
Beyond Petroleum, though whether they’ve delivered on that promise to divest from fossil fuels is open to debate.
“Throwing away a brand that’s been around for decades, or longer, is not something to be done lightly,” says Shore. “You have to calculate and see if the brand and business can survive it.”
Renaming the company won’t fix Facebook’s image problem.
Facebook, the social media platform that 30% (by one estimate) of the world uses, might still be called Facebook, but the parent company, which owns Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus and a number of mysterious unrevealed projects, could be given a new moniker.
“These kinds of name changes have always been a part of the technology landscape,” says linguist Anthony Shore, founder of naming company Operative Words. “Anytime companies outgrow and diversify from where they were, it makes it likely that they will have to change their original name, or the name of their holding company.”
Lately, Facebook has been talking about how it isn’t just building a social media company; it’s building the metaverse, leading some to theorize that this may be the new company name, if it does announce one.
In fact, Facebook started as a social media company. But at present, all the companies are working under Facebook. In such a situation, Facebook wants to bring all its subsidiaries under a brand name. This will help Facebook to take its business forward in a better way.
