Blog
What’s in a name? Re-branding the Territorial Army
14th October 2012
News reports today suggest that the Defence secretary is considering re-naming the Territorial Army to the 'Army Reserve' in an attempt to increase the forces credibility at a time when its numbers are growing (matching the decline of personnel within the regular full-time army). Does a simple name change make any difference? Of course it does - the business world is littered with examples of brands that have changed their names either to appeal to a wider market, reduce the costs of having different brand names in different countries or reflect a change in ownership. The return of the name of 'St James' Park' for the home ground of Newcastle United was also announced this week as Wonga.com confirmed a sponsorship deal with the football club but declined the opportunity to have the ground re-branded with their company name. Ask Newcastle fans if they are happy to cheer on the Toon at the Wonga stadium I'm sure they would give you a very succinct and negative answer.The attached activity is a quick and simple game to see how many re-branded products can be identified by students.
The activity below is a quick (5 to 10 minute) game to see if students can identify changed brand names. The simple Powerpoint file has 20 names within the first slide - 10 original brand names and their new versions. Split your class in to teams (no more than 5) and ask them to take it in turns to 'guess' which two names match. If they have got the two names matched, clicking on each name will make their boxes change to the same colour. If they have got the match wrong, click back on the wrong names to return to a white background. Give the teams a point each time they get a correct match. The second slide in the file gives you the dates of the changes.
When doing a bit of research for this activity I was interested to find some products that were renamed but then reverted back to their original name after a short while. This included:
- Coco Pops took the name used in the rest of Europe, Choco Krispies in 1998, before changing back to the original brand of Coco Pops in 1999.
- Deloitte Consulting became Braxton in 2002 before changing back to the original brand of Deloitte Consulting in 2003