Elon Musk suggested that he might replace Twitter’s bird-logo, which has been on the site since it was founded, with an “X”. Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of the site, said that a switch could be made as soon as Monday morning if an appropriate replacement is found in time.
A major rebranding could be risky given the past history of negative customer reactions to high-profile corporate rebrandings. We look at the five most controversial ones: The asset manager Standard Life Aberdeen was In 2021, the world will be mocked roundly For shortening and removing vowels, Abrdn is pronounced “Aberdeen”. The Edinburgh-based company, whose roots date back to 1825, has decided to stick with the new name despite all the criticism. Gap, a US clothing brand, was forced to a Breakneck reversal in its plans to change its logo In the course of six days, 2010. Social media users were scathing about the new design. It replaced the familiar blue square with the company name in serif font capitals with Helvetica “Gap”, a lowercase black font with a blue square above the “p”.
In 2000 the oil giant BP introduced a new logo with a sunburst, called Helios after the Greek sun-god, in an effort to rebrand as a green energy company. The company said that its name in the future would be “beyond Petroleum” instead of British Petroleum. However, environmentalists were not impressed and accused it of greenwashing. In early 2001, the centuries-old Royal Mail changed its name to “Consignia”, after a two year process of overhauling its image and achieving a more contemporary appeal. The £2m was a significant change. Meaningless criticism It lasted for less than 18 months, before being scrapped. The French company operating the Channel Tunnel Changed its corporate name Groupe Eurotunnel changed its name to Getlink, in 2017, a move that it claimed prepared the company for a post-Brexit world. The name was conceived by the directors of the company, who said it was “very Anglo-Saxon”. However, six years later many people still call the company by its previous moniker.