Thread: A renaming analogy
Hi,
In thinking about the renaming issue, I remembered a case that is a
good analogy with ours: FedEx.
The Company Formerly Known as Federal Express changed their name. I
can still recall their old slogan: "Federal Express: When it
absolutely, positively has to be there overnight." For reasons I
don't know (but could probably learn if I spent some time doing the
research), they concluded that they should re-brand as FedEx. They
had something going for them in that new name: that's what everyone
"in the know" _already_ called them.
It was still a big change, because _other_ people who had been
exposed to "Federal Express" for a long time, but didn't use couriers
regularly, maybe didn't use that short form.
Perhaps we could study that case as a means to understand how such
changes ought to be undertaken. It looks to me like they did a good
job. Certainly my paper reports that they're doing reasonably well,
for a company so dependent on fuel prices for profit.
[Note that this is not a post on the topic of whether or when to
change names as such, so I have kept my promise not to post in that
thread any more. :) ]
A
--
Andrew Sullivan | ajs@crankycanuck.ca
The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness.
--George Orwell
On 9/2/07, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca> wrote: > In thinking about the renaming issue, I remembered a case that is a > good analogy with ours: FedEx. Good analogy. > The Company Formerly Known as Federal Express changed their name. I > can still recall their old slogan: "Federal Express: When it > absolutely, positively has to be there overnight." For reasons I > don't know (but could probably learn if I spent some time doing the > research), they concluded that they should re-brand as FedEx. They > had something going for them in that new name: that's what everyone > "in the know" _already_ called them. http://www.vizual.com/resources/nl/Nov03/article1.asp -- Jonah H. Harris, Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1324 EnterpriseDB Corporation | fax: 732.331.1301 33 Wood Ave S, 3rd Floor | jharris@enterprisedb.com Iselin, New Jersey 08830 | http://www.enterprisedb.com/
On Sep 2, 2007, at 7:23 PM, Jonah H. Harris wrote: >> The Company Formerly Known as Federal Express changed their name. I >> can still recall their old slogan: "Federal Express: When it >> absolutely, positively has to be there overnight." For reasons I >> don't know (but could probably learn if I spent some time doing the >> research), they concluded that they should re-brand as FedEx. They >> had something going for them in that new name: that's what everyone >> "in the know" _already_ called them. > > http://www.vizual.com/resources/nl/Nov03/article1.asp Relevant quotes... Under a cloak of secrecy on June 22, 1994, a mysterious aircraft landed on a darkened runway in Memphis and was swiftly guided into an awaiting hangar. Only a handful of security guards standing watch against intruders witnessed the late night operation, which took less than 20 minutes to complete. Two days later the whole world knew the secret. With news media, public officials and 4,000 FedEx employees present ... the world's largest overnight delivery carrier unveiled its new corporate identity -- the culmination of two years of research and design and weeks of clandestine implementation. Video relays around the globe carried an event that usually doesn't get much play beyond a company's in-house newsletter. Research surveys also uncovered problems with the word federal. In 1973, the word had given the company immediate equity, an official alternative to the post office, but today it was more often associated with being bureaucratic and slow. In Latin American countries, it conjured images of the federales, and in some other parts of the world, people had trouble pronouncing Federal Express. With a June 24 deadline looming, the design team worked 70-hour weeks. The launch of the new FedEx name was a closely guarded secret, intended by management to catch the public -- and the competition -- unaware. "We wanted to make an event, to create a whole new identity as if it had happened overnight and get as much coverage as we could," says Christensen. Two days before the event, a newly converted MD-11 was secretly flown from a paint hangar in Mobile, Ala. and hidden behind the immense doors of FedEx Hangar Ten in Memphis. -- Decibel!, aka Jim Nasby decibel@decibel.org EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com 512.569.9461 (cell)
On Sunday 2 September 2007 20:23, Jonah H. Harris wrote: > On 9/2/07, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca> wrote: > > In thinking about the renaming issue, I remembered a case that is a > > good analogy with ours: FedEx. > > Good analogy. other examples of change BMO: Bank of Montreal KFC: Kentucky Fired Chicken TD: Toronto Dominion Bank This shortening of company names has been going ever since the term "trans-global corporation" came into common parlance. Robert
On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 06:21:26AM -0400, Robert Bernier wrote: > > other examples of change > > BMO: Bank of Montreal > KFC: Kentucky Fired Chicken > TD: Toronto Dominion Bank > > This shortening of company names has been going ever since the term > "trans-global corporation" came into common parlance. Only the latter of those had ever been something everyone was already using, though, which was the point of the analogy. BMO is still rarely used by its customers (and more than I call my bank, RBC -- it's still "the Royal"). The change to the ticker-symbol name was really an attempt to attract a new kind of customer -- corporate customers who do "big deals" that are either spectacularly successful or take the bank down with them. TD is a special case -- they never actually changed their name to TD. That was their logo, though, so people called it that. They're now actually TDCanadaTrust, since they merged with Canada Trust. But everyone I know who banks there says they bank at TD. So that's actually a case where the branding effort has failed, and is entirely similar to the current state of affairs in our project: there's an official name (PostgreSQL) and the thing that people actually call it (Postgres). There are other strange things that people call it too (some people still call their bank Canada Trust or, even, Lincoln Trust! They were annoyed about being soaked up by TD). And KFC was yet a different case. They had invested _years_ in their old brand, but came to be convinced that the word "Fried" was doing them in. So they had to spend a great deal of money and effort convincing everyone that you should call them KFC as opposed to Kentucky Fried Chicken. They actually took a hit in brand recognition while they did it. Surely that's not a strategy to ape. A -- Andrew Sullivan | ajs@crankycanuck.ca However important originality may be in some fields, restraint and adherence to procedure emerge as the more significant virtues in a great many others. --Alain de Botton
On 9/3/07, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca> wrote: > Only the latter of those had ever been something everyone was already > using, though, which was the point of the analogy. While fairly irrelevant to Postgres, I disagree. Years before they changed their name, everyone I know called Kentucky Fried Chicken just KFC. -- Jonah H. Harris, Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1324 EnterpriseDB Corporation | fax: 732.331.1301 33 Wood Ave S, 3rd Floor | jharris@enterprisedb.com Iselin, New Jersey 08830 | http://www.enterprisedb.com/
On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 09:29:47AM -0400, Jonah H. Harris wrote:
> While fairly irrelevant to Postgres, I disagree. Years before they
> changed their name, everyone I know called Kentucky Fried Chicken just
> KFC.
Oh, really? Interesting. That's _not_ irrelevant to our case, then.
I didn't know anyone who called it that, however, which is also
relevant in the analogy: different regions have different usage.
Anyway, there's a very important thing to learn from the article
about FedEx, which you dug up. That is the importance of planning
the change. They planned well, did a lot of work, laid a lot of
groundwork, and then had a big unveiling. They also did it in time
to paint correctly the new vehicles they had arriving, to minimise
the time that the two versions of their name were hanging around.
This all suggests to me that they weren't making the decision right
before "going beta", but in time to co-ordinate with other items
already in place.
A
--
Andrew Sullivan | ajs@crankycanuck.ca
This work was visionary and imaginative, and goes to show that visionary
and imaginative work need not end up well.
--Dennis Ritchie
On 9/3/07, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca> wrote: > Anyway, there's a very important thing to learn from the article > about FedEx, which you dug up. That is the importance of planning > the change. They planned well, did a lot of work, laid a lot of > groundwork, and then had a big unveiling. They also did it in time > to paint correctly the new vehicles they had arriving, to minimise > the time that the two versions of their name were hanging around. > This all suggests to me that they weren't making the decision right > before "going beta", but in time to co-ordinate with other items > already in place. Agreed. -- Jonah H. Harris, Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1324 EnterpriseDB Corporation | fax: 732.331.1301 33 Wood Ave S, 3rd Floor | jharris@enterprisedb.com Iselin, New Jersey 08830 | http://www.enterprisedb.com/
Jim Nasby wrote: > On Sep 2, 2007, at 7:23 PM, Jonah H. Harris wrote: > >> The Company Formerly Known as Federal Express changed their name. I > >> can still recall their old slogan: "Federal Express: When it > >> absolutely, positively has to be there overnight." For reasons I > >> don't know (but could probably learn if I spent some time doing the > >> research), they concluded that they should re-brand as FedEx. They > >> had something going for them in that new name: that's what everyone > >> "in the know" _already_ called them. > > > > http://www.vizual.com/resources/nl/Nov03/article1.asp > > Relevant quotes... > > Under a cloak of secrecy on June 22, 1994, a mysterious aircraft I think we lost the "cloak of secrecy" option. ;-) -- Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - --On Monday, September 03, 2007 06:21:26 -0400 Robert Bernier <robert.bernier5@sympatico.ca> wrote: > On Sunday 2 September 2007 20:23, Jonah H. Harris wrote: >> On 9/2/07, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca> wrote: >> > In thinking about the renaming issue, I remembered a case that is a >> > good analogy with ours: FedEx. >> >> Good analogy. > > other examples of change > > BMO: Bank of Montreal > KFC: Kentucky Fired Chicken > TD: Toronto Dominion Bank > > This shortening of company names has been going ever since the term > "trans-global corporation" came into common parlance. Wow, and I notice a trend there also ... all multi-million dollar companies with a shit load of money to burn on marketing ... And, in fact, KFC is a bad example ... they were court ordered to change, due to the questionability of the 'Chicken' part of the name ... And, most places I look still refer to 'Bank of Montreal', or 'BMO Bank of Montreal', which I've always found to be a bit weird/redundant ... - ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email . scrappy@hub.org MSN . scrappy@hub.org Yahoo . yscrappy Skype: hub.org ICQ . 7615664 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQFG3F344QvfyHIvDvMRAmZZAJwOIKmNixW9rqmOCM7Haa4znOQzzgCg3hP7 VOp96T9m6+O2/ody17oUrZc= =MYnI -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On 9/3/07, Marc G. Fournier <scrappy@hub.org> wrote: > And, in fact, KFC is a bad example ... they were court ordered to change, due > to the questionability of the 'Chicken' part of the name ... In fact, you should stop listening to urban legends and do your homework. http://www.snopes.com/lost/kfc.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KFC I can find countless other references, but those two are all one needs to disprove your statement. -- Jonah H. Harris, Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1324 EnterpriseDB Corporation | fax: 732.331.1301 33 Wood Ave S, 3rd Floor | jharris@enterprisedb.com Iselin, New Jersey 08830 | http://www.enterprisedb.com/
Jonah H. Harris wrote: > On 9/3/07, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca> wrote: >> Only the latter of those had ever been something everyone was already >> using, though, which was the point of the analogy. > > While fairly irrelevant to Postgres, I disagree. Years before they > changed their name, everyone I know called Kentucky Fried Chicken just > KFC. And now they're going through great marketing effort to get that "Kentucky" image back into their brand - they're starting to refer to the full name again in their ads. -- Lew