Sunday, December 28

Maybe it’s not worth the effort…

One of the most expensive and time-consuming things a company can do is to change its name. Or even the spelling or punctuation of its name. Several months ago, Wal-Mart decided it would like to be called Walmart, getting rid of the hyphen and the capital M, while at the same time transcending the trendy NamesSeparatedOnlyByCapitalLetters, such as DaimlerChryslerBigFlop. Now it has to replace the thousands of signs on its stores, re-print all its stationery, re-label all its giant delivery trucks, and so on. But harder still, it has to get the word out to the news media. So far, that part isn’t working.
Above is a snippet of a news article in yesterday’s New York Times. They’re still using the hyphen.

Here’s another snippet, this time from yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle.

Walmart isn’t alone. JCPenney took out the periods after its initials years ago. But, as is shown below from yesterday’s New York Times, that never happened.


As the final irony, below is the copyright notice that appeared yesterday on Walmart’s own Web site:

1 comment:

Susan Hurley-Luke said...

Wow. I Didn't realise PaperCraftCentral.com was in such good company...