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Comment by MartinCron | Hacker News Reader

Back when I was in Business School, I did some strategic analysis role-modeling as if I were in charge of Monsanto. At the time, Monsanto was best known for the "terminator gene", suing farmers allegedly stealing their agricultural IP, and BT corn that killed monarch butterflies.

I suggested that they change their name as the first part of their strategy to turn over a new leaf in both PR as well as core business activity. My peers mocked me, saying that no big evil corporation would be so brazen as to just change their name to clean up their brand, as their critics would see right through it.

The very next week, Philip Morris rebranded itself to Altria.

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It's a good strategy. Interestingly Blackwater changed their name to Xe to try and shake off the bad image.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_Worldwide

Still a nasty organization, name change or not.

I think the trick is in choosing a new name that actually sounds nicer than the old one, and not that of an alien overlord.

Well, they are mercenaries after all...

I half suspect they picked a difficult to pronounce name so nobody would talk about them.

Neither of the names are PR gold. 'Blackwater' is the plumber's term for sewage. 'Xe' sounds alien or like a B-movie villain accent: "We have xe plans, nothing will prevent xe final solution now!"

The genius behind 'Xe' is that some people will say 'zee', others will say 'ecks-ee'. If someone hears something bad about the organization by mouth, they won't know what to type into Google to read about it, and even if they do know how to spell it they'll get hits about a noble gas and a currency exchange site.

They are both really spooky sounding names, though. Blackwater is so alpha-male sounding, and it makes the phrase "Blackwater Contractor" sound (probably) more evil than they actually are.

They were originally named after the area in Virginia where they were located, but what always struck me as odd (given that they are all ex navy) is that "black water" is the common nautical term for ship sewage. That's a rough brand association to overcome.

The (evil) genius in the Blackwater rebranding is that they anti-SEO'd themselves by picking such an overused new name. Even if you followed the name change, searching for Xe didn't return any Blackwater-relevant results for quite awhile.

And unless people spell it out in conversation, no one would know to search for "Xe" anyway.

Value Jet renamed themselves AirTran after one of their planes exploded. GTE became Verizon after being horrible for years.

Great hacker branding intro: http://blip.tv/file/319044/

"A brand is a const identifier."

(back story to the video: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/08/how-to-make-funny-ta...)

Windscale renamed itself Sellafield after a little tiny, nothing to worry about, nothing to see here, reactor explosion.

Plan B, after the next incident, is to rename it Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

Here's some humour help. Looks like your third attempt is almost Welsh.

How about: Windscale renamed itself Sellafield after their reactor exploded. I hear they're going to try "Blaidd Drwg" next.

Llanfair.... is a famous (for very small values of famous) welsh railway station with the longest name in the world. People go there to take pictures of the sign.

However having a name longer than a tweet is likely to limit your fame in the internet age!

Mae'n ddrwg gennyf am y camddeall. Yr wyf yn sefyll gywiro.

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