The Evolution of a Classic Brand
In my book, Branding Insights for Small Businsses, I used the example of Exxon, the oil company:
which used to be called Esso:
The powers that be at Esso needed to change the company name and they decided to let a computer select the name for them.
They fed the computer some parameters:
- it had to have two syllables
- double consonants
- start with an “E”
- be a name that wasn’t being used throughout the world and
- no meaning in foreign language.
Exxon was supposedly the only word the computer came up with.
I like Exxon because it was the first company that used a computer for naming – or in this instance re-naming – a company.
Although this happened awhile ago, I still find this case study very interesting. And, at least they kept the colors the same!
