During the American Civil War, J P Morgan bought defective rifles from the army, and sold them back to the government as new, non-defective weapons. Not only did he make a profit on the sale, but he actually pre-sold the weapons to the government and used that money to buy the bad guns in the first place. It worked because the rifles were simply “re-branded” so they weren’t immediately recognized for what they were. It’s a tactic that is still used to this day. It doesn’t always work, though, and rebranding projects can sometimes damage an otherwise respected name. Perhaps most famously among Americans was Coke’s release of “New Coke” in 1985. After sales lagging behind Pepsi, they decided to change the formula and introduced New Coke. Ultimately, the brand was a flop, not because it tasted bad but just because people were opposed to changing the formula in the first place. They re-introduced the old formula and saved the company, and New Coke was re-branded Coke II in the 90′s, but nobody cared. It was essentially a dead product. The formula still lives on, though; they replaced the sugar with aspartame and continue to sell the “New Coke” formula under the name “Diet Coke”.
What other colossal rebranding failures just make you shake your head?
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Sebring —> 200 before there was a full-out redesign.
Pepsi's new logo – how much did they spend to go from this:
<img src="http://www.logoblog.org/images/pepsi-logo.jpg">
to this:
<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3003/2969469986_58df961085.jpg">
Worth every penny, as the redesign saved Pepsi from a nasty court battle with Studebaker….
<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2604/3875804597_4299248da5.jpg" width="300">
And GM
<img src="http://www.sportscardigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/021909-1437-bookreviewd4.jpg" width="500" />
http://jalopnik.com/5748370/welcome-to-the-new-ja…
Ooooh, snap.
Heh… the definite end of an era, in my internet browsing saga.
How did I not see that one coming when we were discussing this last night?
Well you may be right, but it still feels like someone screaming from the cheap seats.
While it drove some of the best commenters away from the site best known for dragonning and McQueen ween, Most of them found their way to Hoonitoast, so it's not all bad news.
What about my ween ?
Whether it's a magnificent seven inches or a junior boner making a great escape from your pants, don't be an enemy of the people. Getaway to one of many other sites far more appropriate for posting photos of your bullitt and sand pebbles.
Argh! For that you should be declared Wanted: Dead or Alive.
"Junior boner"
Absolutely brilliant.
The awesomeness of your comment is manifest.
<img src="http://i615.photobucket.com/albums/tt237/jskitter/Atomic%20Toasters/IdioticLexusMarketing2.jpg">
If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Lexus Marketing Department throwing chairs.
oh man, that image is just a shopping cart full of frustration! The conflict in my head regarding what my kneejerk reaction should be is painful. It's between "volumetrically? no shit!" and "but wait, energy density…"
I'm trying to work it out into electron volts per second, but my computer is giving me grief, telling me some nonsense about not enough cheese.
From this:
<img src="http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/1379023111/winnipeg-jets_reasonably_small.png">
To this:
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e0/Phoenix_Coyotes.svg/230px-Phoenix_Coyotes.svg.png">
And back again! Wait… no, isn't it Atlanta that's moving to Winnipeg? I forget.
So do we call them the Jets II, just like Coke did?
Just double the "T" in the logo: JETTS.
It's less obvious this way so they won't be immediately doomed to fail.
Yep, the Atlanta Thrashers are moving to Winnipeg. I think maybe 500 people out of the 5,000,000 in the metro Atlanta area really care. I'm not one of those 500.
No, no, "New Jets".
And their logo could be a stick figure throwing a spear.
<img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41SSAAESHAL._SL500_AA300_.jpg">
My first wife's attempt at rebranding herself "Mrs. Alff"*
*Not my real surname.
My wife went through some confusion there. She went by her middle name, so when she got married, she just dropped her maiden name. My grandmother didn't realize she was going to do this (and didn't know she went by her middle name) and got her a necklace with a monogram, the kind with the last initial big in the middle and the other two initials on the outside. So it was her middle initial, (big) married initial, and maiden name initial. It read PMS.
<img src="http://flmsdown.net/uploads/posts/2009-08/1251201225_alf.-season2.jpg">
Datsun –> Nissan. Nissan still doesn't sound right.
Datsun excellent example.
…
…I'm sorry.
Car companies are the masters of this. The Daewoo Lacetti becomes the Chevrolet Lacetti/Cruze. The Geo brand got merged into the Chevrolet brand in North America after Geo became known as a maker of amazingly shitty shitboxes. That one didn't go too well, as now they were amazingly shitty shitboxes with the bowtie on them, making Chevrolet the maker of the shitboxes and not some minor brand in the GM family.
Ford is not immune. Their Kia-built Festiva of the late 1980s soured a generation on the name Festiva.
Hey! As the owner of an MG Metro I… have no comment.
Oddly enough, many times car companies are successful at this. Just look at Acura, Infinity, and Lexus and to a lesser extent Lincoln, Chrysler, and Cadillac. Let's take the basic model, throw some more options and a different grill on it and add a big premium for the "luxury" brand. It really makes some folks mad when you call their Acura a Honda.
Sure, some of these now have exclusive platforms, but there is still a lot of platform sharing with lesser brands.
Also from Ford, the Taurus – Five Hundred – (rebadged Five Hundred named Taurus) – current Taurus shenanigans.
Wait the Lacetti and the Cruze are the same thing? I have the original Chevy Lacetti from when it came here in 2004, but they called it an Optra in Canada. I thought they just killed it altogether – you're telling me that the Cruze that they're saying is a real winner is just a re-badged version of my car? FWIW, they also brought it to the US as the "Suzuki Forenza".
I didn't say I bought it because it was cool. Just because it was
cheap, um, reasonably priced.Borland –> Imprise –> Borland.
+10 for geek factor on that one.
Wait, Borland is still alive? (again?) Does that mean I can write Delphi again? How about Turbo Pascal?
No, I really don't want to, I just wanted to know that I could if I wanted to.
Any carmaker that has dumped perfectly good model names (e.g. Continental, Seville, Legend…) for confusing, soulless alphabet soup.
Yea, 'cause "Lincoln Zephyr" doesn't capture the imagination like the magical, lyrical "MkZ."
/sarcasm
So Nvidia comes out with the 8800GTS/GTX. They have a Good Thing going once they sort out the heat issues and stupid high failure rates, replacing these with a new revision of 8800GS/GT/GTS. The little brothers, the 8600 series, soldier on alongside. All's well so far.
Competitor ATI, at this time, replaces the broadly-inferior 2000 series with the 3000s – a silly enough minor-refreshing exercise to be sure, but not nearly as cynical as what Nvidia did in response…
…namely literally rebadging the 8800GS as a 9600GSO, the 8800GT as a 9800GT, and the 8800GTS (albeit with a second SLI connector) as a 9800GTX. The cheaper 9600GT was nearly identical to the 8600GTS as well. Nearly the entire line was day-old baked goods, albeit tasty ones, brashly marked with the current date.
AMD/ATI then introduced their properly-refreshed 4000 series cards – the equivalent, perhaps, of Volvo replacing the four-cylinder 760 Turbo with the 960 for '91. Nvidia's all-new high-end product response, the GTX 260/280, was a Big Deal, but their midrange GTS 250… wait for it…
…was a 9800GTX. Which, if you'll recall, was a second-revision 8800GTS to begin with. Here you go, America, here's your '03 Cavalier. Hope you like the new nose. At least we did something in '95, right? To Hell with it, you really want a new CTS anyway, we have those over here.
<img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_T0HqdkLlYvE/TKe8YdT7cdI/AAAAAAAAA24/mHbSUu0BPe4/s1600/asplode.jpg">
IMG from playreadwrite.blogspot.com