Plumbers’ merchant Wolseley PLC (LON:WOS) is treading a well-worn path in changing its name to that of its main brand.
It worked for Hayward Tyler Group PLC (LON:HAYT), once known as Specialist Energy Group before it decided to capitalise on having a 200-year-old brand name in the group.
For Research In Motion, the company now known as Blackberry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY, TSE:BB)? Well, let’s just say it will take more of a name change to turn that company’s fortunes around.
In 2001, Andersen Consulting was one of the first companies to change its name to something meaningless but intended to be evocative when it chose Accenture after being hived off from accountancy firm Arthur Andersen.
It took a lot of stick for the name change but it was looking a smart move when Arthur Andersen’s name became tainted by its role in the Enron scandal.
Consignia? Insania? Deliria?
A year after Accenture came the great Consignia name change debacle.
If you are a teenager, you’d be forgiven for scratching your head wondering who or what Consignia is, never mind what it means.
Practically anyone over the age of 30, however, will know that Consignia was the disastrous rebranding of what was once known as the General Post Office, or GPO, and the Royal Mail.
The brand consultants got given the brief of uniting the three main operating divisions – the Post Office, the Royal Mail, and Parcelforce – and came up with a right load of old bolloxia.
True, it became a household name; but so did Windscale, the nuclear fuel reprocessing plant now known as Sellafield.
The name has been consigned (hah!) to the dustbin of history, though we do hear rumours The Royal Mail Group PLC (LON:RMG) is thinking of changing its name to The Pension Fund Deficit Group.
British Tyre & Rubber is a fine old descriptive name. If memory serves, it was a founding member of the FT 30, the forerunner to the FTSE 100.
It stopped making tyres in 1956 – a sound move – and changed its name to BTR.
It acquired Hawker Siddeley in 1992 and had a chance to “do a Wolseley” and change its name to its most famous brand, but it stuck with BTR until 1999 when it merged with Siebe (formerly Siebe Gorman) and changed its name to Invensys.
What does it mean?
Dunno, guv.
It’s evocative, innit?
The name change did not stop it being acquired by Schneider Electric, which quickly phased out the Invensys name.
There's gonna be an eruption
The name Vesuvius Plc (LON:CKSN) is definitely evocative, but its former name, Cookson, dates back to 1704, so in effect it has done the reverse of Wolseley, and dumped its best known brand.
The new name was possibly inspired by the 1987 acquisition of the Vesuvius Crucible Company, or possibly by the chairman’s holiday in southern Italy.
Either way, every time it releases results the Proactive editorial team scratches its collective head until someone pipes up, “You know – Cookson Group.”.
One of the more controversial name changes of recent times – and not just because it was to another meaningless, evocative sounding name – concerned Norwich Union, now known as Aviva PLC (LON:AV.).
It also did a “reverse Wolseley” and turned its back on its best known brand, even though the Norwich Union name dates back to the 18th century.
The Norwich Union brand was phased out at the end of the previous decade; foreigners had difficulty pronouncing it, apparently, and disgruntled people from Norfolk deliberately mispronouncing the company’s new name “Avvy-vah” failed to persuade the board to change its mind.
The brand consultants win; the rest of us just shrug our shoulders and carry on
Truth be told, a company name change is probably less risky than changing the brand name of a single product.
I speak as one who still pops into the sweet shop to buy a Marathon (but oddly, never a bag of Treets).
On the other hand, I remember Bertolli spread used to be called something else with the word “olive” somewhere in the name – Olivio? – but I seem to have become used to the new brand name, even if it does sound like the manager of a second division Italian football team.
Thanks to Prince, we've all become used to the "formerly known as" explanatory phrase. I give it two years at most before the new name Ferguson has supplanted Wolseley in our memories. In the meantime, let us all be thankful there are no ranDom cApiTal letTers in the new name.