11 Major Rebranding Disasters and What You Can Learn From Them

8/12/2019 11 Major Rebranding Disasters and What You Can Learn From Them

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11 Major Rebranding

Disasters And What YouCan Learn From ThemHARRISON JACOBS 0 APR 4, 2014, 11.07 PM

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SyFy/Screenshot

Every company is defined by a few things: its name, logo,

and brand identity. Successfully executing a change inany of those three areas can change the face of acompany, whether freshening up the brand or signaling a
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new direction. Fail at that task, however, and you willlikely have a public relations nightmare on your hands.

Rebranding is notoriously difficult, especially with businesses that have an established identity and history.In recent years, many companies have completely botched rebranding attempts.

We've collected the 11 worst rebranding disasters in

recent memory. If there's one lesson, it's that arebranding isn't to be taken lightly. It requiresoverhauling a company's goals, message, and culture -not just the logo.

The SciFi Channel's "text-friendly" new

name is a slang word for syphilis.The SciFi Channel, a TV channel that broadcasts sciencefiction, fantasy, supernatural, and horror programming,rebranded to the SyFy Channel in 2009. The company'smain justification was two-fold: It couldn't own thetrademark on SciFi, and it wanted to go with somethingthat was more "cutting edge."


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To pick the name, it asked tech-savvy 18- to 34-year-olds(its predominant demographic) for feedback, who told

them that SyFy was how someone would text the name . The company bought in, but it was ill-advised. It turnsout "syfy" is a slang term for the STD syphilis . The newname association was ridiculed, and many longtime fansdecried the name change.

Pepsi spends $1.2 billion on this rebrand, with the logo alone costing $1 million. Wecan't figure out why.

Pepsi/Screenshot
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Pepsi has never been a stranger to brand redesigns,having undergone one nearly once a decade over its 100-

plus-year history. In 2008, Pepsi unveiled the latestredesign, which saw the company rotating its iconiccircular logo and adjusting the tilt of the white stripe.The entire rebranding effort cost the company a whopping $1.2 billion over three years.

It's not exactly a revolutionary change, so where the pricetag comes from we're not sure.

The white stripe is supposed to vary across each Pepsiproduct, getting wider or thinner depending on theproduct. The stripes are supposed to look like smiles, butit's hard to see and most customers didn't notice.

For a company that's competing with one of the mosticonic American brands around (Coca-Cola), it can beforgiven for trying something new, but this rebrandcomes across as a giant waste of time and money.

London goes "modern" with its logo forthe 2012 Summer Olympics. Everyonethinks it's just ugly.


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IOC/Screenshot

For the unveiling of the 2012 Olympics logo, Londonofficials were looking to go for something modern andfresh. According to the official website, the logo wasmeant to be " simple, distinct, bold, and buzzing withenergy ."
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Unfortunately, most people didn't agree. The Atlanticcalled it " a slapdash mess in acid colors ." An unofficial

public poll by the BBC found that 80% of those surveyedgave the logo the lowest ranking possible.

Its garish character wasn't the only issue. It was alsoimpossible to decipher what it meant. Iranians claimed itlooked like the word "Zion ," while bloggers suggested thelogo looked like Lisa Simpson was performing a sexualact .

All in all, not a great day for Great Britain.

RadioShack tries way too hard to be hip with "The Shack."
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Radioshack/Screenshot

It took RadioShack a while to get the memo, but

sometime around 2009, it realized that radios weren'texactly cutting-edge technology. Instead of embracing itshistory, the company attempted to go hip by ditching"radio" in favor of "The Shack."

Unsurprisingly, it was widely ridiculed. Engadget's

Joshua Topolsky pointed to the automatic horror-movieconnotation: " They wanted us to immediately picture aremote place where very, very bad things happen ."
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In an interview with Business Insider in 2011, brandingguru Rob Frankel questioned the company's

motives . "Why would anyone throw away decades of brand value, which actually shows up on the balancesheet as an intangible asset, just to try to be cool for a fewminutes?" asked Frankel.

Capital One revamps its logo with aswoosh that is equally dated.

Capital One/Screenshot
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In an effort to rebrand to a newer, younger demographicin 2008, Capital One added a "swoosh" to its logo. It was

about a decade too late.Perhaps Capital One execs wanted to capture the Nikecrowd, but as Alice Bergin of award-winning brandagency Method, Inc told Business Insider, "it's been donea million times before."

"They wanted to have more of a consumer-facing feel, but this is too obvious," said Bergin.

Andersen Consulting picks up a new namethat sounds like corporate jargon.
http://method.com/http://method.com/http://method.com/http://method.com/http://method.com/http://method.com/


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Accenture/Screenshot

In 2000, Andersen Consulting broke all ties with Arthur

Andersen, the company's namesake, after a nasty disputeover money. As part of an arbitration between thecompany and Andersen, the consulting company agreedto change its name.

The company can't be faulted for ditching a historic

brand-name, but the new name its leaders chose wasabout as nonsensical as it gets - Accenture. Time's editorscalled it " one of the worst rebrandings in corporatehistory ."

According to Frankel, it sounds like the quintessential,

meaningless, "big corporation" name. "It tells thecustomer nothing" she said.

And that is a bad sign.

Blackwater tries to erase its past, fails,and tries to erase it again.
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Academi/Screenshot

Get caught killing innocent Iraqi civilians and you too

might want to execute a corporate name change. That was the thought when notorious private security firmBlackwater Worldwide rebranded to Xe, a name that wasmeant to evoke exactly nothing .

It may have been successful on that front, but the

meaninglessness of the name simply caused most peopleto continue to refer to the company as Blackwater, whichlead the company to try a second rebrand just three yearslater.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/world/middleeast/08blackwater.html?pagewanted=allhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/world/middleeast/08blackwater.html?pagewanted=allhttp://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/blackwater-names/story?id=9634372http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/blackwater-names/story?id=9634372http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/blackwater-names/story?id=9634372http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/blackwater-names/story?id=9634372http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/blackwater-names/story?id=9634372http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/08/world/middleeast/08blackwater.html?pagewanted=all


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The new name, Academi, was chosen to reflect " thechanges we made in the company ," its president, Ted

Wright, told The Washington Post.The new name is supposed to evoke the idea ofa "Platonic Academy," the Ancient Greek ideal of aphilosophical institution where ideas aredebated,because what else says distinguished thinkerslike a private army.

Tropicana learns the golden rule: Don'tmess with a classic.

Tropicana/Screenshot
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Around the same time that PepsiCo was putting thefinishing touches on the redesign of its flagship Pepsi

brand, it was also tinkering with Tropicana, perhaps themost recognizable orange-juice brand around.

In 2009, PepsiCo rolled out its new carton designs forTropicana, ditching the iconic orange-with-a-straw, infavor of a cleaner, more type-heavy design.

The reaction was not kind. PepsiCo was bombarded withemails, phone calls, and social media posts blasting thenew carton. According to the New York Times, customersdescribed the new design as "ugly," "stupid," andreminiscent of " a generic store brand ."

The reaction bore out in the numbers. Sales of theTropicana Pure Premium line plummeted by 20% .PepsiCo quickly reverted back to the old design.

Comcast tries a slick, new name to makecustomers forget about its poor service. It

doesn't work.
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Comcast/Screenshot

Also named in Time's Top 10 Worst Corporate Name

Changes, Comcast's decision to rename itself "Xfinity" in11 of its U.S. markets was met with confusion by nearlyeveryone, including us at the time. As Dan Frommer wrote for Business Insider, " Xfinity? Seriously? Whatdoes that mean? "

Comcast hoped the new name would help customersforget its high prices and poor customer service, but when Comcast is just about the only option in town
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either way, no amount of rebranding is going to changecustomers' opinions.

The Gap tries to freshen its brand, butinstead makes its loyal customers irate.

Gap/Screenshot

During the Christmas season in 2010, Gap decided to rollout a complete rebrand with no warning. Gap's iconic

logo was replaced with a new one, featuring "Gap" in adifferent font with a light blue square fading diagonallyto dark.


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The backlash was intense. Thousands of tweets andFacebook statuses derided the logo, and a parody Twitter

account and Gap logo generator went viral . The company quickly responded in what was one of thefastest branding turnarounds ever. Six days afterreleasing its new logo, the company reverted.

"Ok," the company wrote on its Facebook page. "We've

heard loud and clear that you don't like the new logo. We've learned a lot from the feedback."

Two lessons: Don't spring a drastic redesign on anunsuspecting public, and listen to your customers.

Netflix tries to separate its streaming andmail service brands. It's an utter disaster.
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Netflix/Screenshot

There are perhaps few worse ways to announce a massive

rebrand than in a public apology from your CEO . At atime when Netflix should have been flying high, due tothe exploding popularity of its streaming service, CEOReed Hastings was apologizing to customers for the waythat the company handled the separation of its core-DVD business and new streaming service.

Instead of learning from past mistakes, Hastings doubleddown, announcing that the DVD business would becomea new company called Qwikster. The reaction was immediate
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and negative. Thousands of people blasted Hastings' move in the

comments section of the blog post.

While the product itself was doomed from the start, the branding compounded the damage. No one knew what"Qwikster" was supposed to mean or how to spell it. Addin an association with both convenience stores (like theKwik-E-Mart) and defunct tech companies like Napsterand Friendster, and you can start to see where this went wrong.

Customers ultimately felt betrayed and confused by thenew product. A month after Qwikster was announced,Netflix killed the venture and folded the DVD-rentalservice back into the company .

Additional reporting by Bianca Male.
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11 Major Rebranding Disasters and What You Can Learn From Them