Wonder

Company Renaming Success Case Studies

Delivered August 7, 2019. Contributor: ChristineD

Goals

Determine the return on investment when companies rename themselves. The information will be used to help clients understand the benefits of renaming their firms.

Early Findings

The following are some of the companies that renamed themselves and achieved positive results based on our initial search.
LG
 LG was originally named Lucky Chemical when it was founded in 1947. The company sold cosmetics during its early years.
In 1958, it merged with GoldStar and was renamed Lucky GoldStar. At this time, the firm added consumer electronics to its product line.
In 1995, the company renamed itself to LG to conform to its customers in the Western countries.
Coinciding with the name change, the company also changed its logo to one with a "smiley face." The logo represents the company's commitment to enable a more fulfilled life for its consumers.
LG also promoted its crafty slogan "Life's Good."
LG's renaming effort is widely considered as the most successful rebranding story of all time.
Prior to its rebrand from Lucky GoldStar to LG, the company's products were seen as cheap and low-end.
After the rebrand, the company strove to level-up its products.
It also improved its distribution model by giving incentives to high-end stores who will display the company's products.
With this move, LG was able to establish a better brand reputation through diligently crafted communication campaigns.
As a result of all these action plans, the company was able to reposition itself as a "mainstream premium brand."

ACCENTURE
 Accenture used to be known as Andersen Consulting and was a consulting division within the Arthur Andersen parent firm. 
However, internal conflicts with its parent company forced it to split from the latter. Andersen Consulting was also mandated to change its name.
 It then took the Accenture brand name.
After the split and the formation of Accenture, Arthur Andersen became involved in the Enron scandal. His company's reputation was in shatters.
However, Accenture remained untouched by the scandal and is well on its way to continuous growth.
It then enjoyed major success in the consulting industry and serves 94 of the Fortune 100 companies.

FEDEX
 FedEx's original name is Federal Express.
In 1994, Fred Smith, the company's founder and CEO, aimed to boost the firm's image.
He then posted a challenge to his creative unit to redesign the company's truck to make it highly visible from a five-block distance.
His creative team then changed the company's name to FedEx. The team also came up with a highly enticing logo.
The new look of the brand captured the firm's competitive edge, which is speed. 
Renaming and rebranding the company enabled it to achieve tremendous success through the years. 
The company also kept its relevancy and power to this day.

GOOGLE
Google's original name is BackRub when it was founded in 1996.
The name came about because of the internet's "back links."
However, the domain occupied a large portion of the Stanford University server's bandwidth after just one year. 
Due to the massive size of their work, the company's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin thought of renaming the company after the term "Googol," the digit 1 succeeded by 100 zeroes.
By mistake, they used google.com instead of googol.com during their search. This then led to the highly popular search domain that we use today.

EBAY
The eBay e-commerce company used to be called by a "clunky" name, auctionweb. 
However, when the public and some popular publications began calling the company by its parent company's name, it changed its name to eBay in 1997.
 
Google and Ebay's name changes are considered as the main factors in propelling their companies into their current multi-billion dollar global status.

Proposed next steps:

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To get all of the requested information, we recommend completing additional research work to determine 2-3 additional case studies of companies that renamed themselves and came out successful because of the change. We will also include quantitative metrics that show the companies' growth. These metrics can pertain to positive results in terms of stock values, new customers, sales, and other success measures. The success metrics should include short and long term results. We will start to look for this in academic research papers and branch out from there as needed.