The Worst Company Name Change Ever?

JH
John Honovich
Mar 15, 2013
IPVM

iomega is no more.

Now, iomega is LenovoEMC.

Is this some sort of massive corporate cop-out? 'Oh, let's just combine both of our corporate names. Who cares we already have a brand name that signifies 'omega', i.e., the ultimate.'

Does anyone have any idea what is the point of such a name change?

It's a clumsy, confusing name.

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Carl Lindgren
Mar 15, 2013

Not so odd.

ConocoPhillips, 20th Century Fox, Alcatel-Lucent, Colgate-Palmolive, GlaxoSmithKline, InBev (from the merger of Interbrew and AmBev), Mandriva (from the merger of Mandrake Linux and Connectiva Linux, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), PricewaterhouseCoopers (publishing), Yoplait (merger of Yola and Coplait) and, of course, Taco Bell (from the combination of Tacos and Bell Peppers).

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Ethan Ace
Mar 15, 2013

Come on, everyone knows that it's called Taco Bell because it was started by Greg Bell... Wait, just me? Ok, just me.

The elimination of the iomega brand seems silly, for the most part. I think maybe some people (I'm sort of part of this group) still just associate them with Zip (or Jaz, anyone?) drives, and they haven't really been taken very seriously since. I would think, however, that something like Cisco did with Linksys would have made more sense. iomega (by EMC), followed by simply absorbing them into the EMC brand.

JB
Jacob Bird
Mar 15, 2013
IPVMU Certified

While I think that iomega sounds awesome, I think that they went with the name change because Lenovo is a Big Name in electronics and will carry more weight.

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Carl Lindgren
Mar 15, 2013

Haha. Took you 3 hours to pick up on that...

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Ethan Ace
Mar 15, 2013

HA, sorry, I've been sick and medicated. I'll try to be quicker next time.

MI
Matt Ion
Mar 15, 2013

Sylvester Stalone already predicted this future...

JH
John Honovich
Mar 15, 2013
IPVM

My issue is not that this is simply the company name but it's going to be the brand name, a la, "Should I order a LenovoEMC ix4?"

Unlike with many of the names of Carl's list, there was no attempt to merge the incoming names, they just plopped them back to back.

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Carl Lindgren
Mar 15, 2013

I'm not sure.

Which do I like better: LenEMC or EMCovo? Hmmmmmmm!

MI
Matt Ion
Mar 15, 2013

EMCovo is at least pronouncable... LenEMC not so much. Kinda like IPVM - uhh, IP-vum? IP-vem?

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Carl Lindgren
Mar 15, 2013

Shhhhh. The exact pronunciation and meaning of IPVM is for Mature Audiences. Parental Discretion is Advised.

How about Lenomega? EMCLenOmega? EggMcMuffin?

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Brian Rhodes
Mar 15, 2013
IPVMU Certified

@ Carl: The name 'Taco Bell' was derived from Glen Bell, the founder. Tomorrow, I'll expand on other random facts. Thank you and good night.

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Carl Lindgren
Mar 15, 2013

Ethan,

You were still the first at 3 hours. Brian, you lose to Ethan by another 3 hours. John, you apparently were oblivious!

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Carl Lindgren
Mar 15, 2013

By the way, it's a wonder the feds have been silent on this. They certainly were highly vocal when it came to the Huawei-Symantec partnership.

BD
Bill Douglas
Mar 15, 2013

Some may recall at one point EMC's market cap exceeded that of Microsoft. Iomega's revenue was a little over $100 million when EMC aquired them. And this is just one of many aquisitions. I am guessing Lenovo and EMC believe there is a bit more good will value in their own names than that of Iomega. So even though Iomega may be a cooler sounding name than LenovoEMC it certaninly doesn't carry the same kind of global brand recognition.

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Mar 17, 2013

In response to above name changes. Its usually more complicated at the business level and they usually want to rebrand for legal reasons and recognition. Usually large monopolies buying up small or key companies for growth and market share or strategic positioning. Unless a merger or complete buy out.

They have to change the name, but not sure what to change to. And theirs the foreign investors who need recognition under the new image with an image they can relate to. National , International laws

Taco Bell is owned by either pepsi or coca cola and they own a huge list of other companies. when you look at the list its huge

Techie companies try to rebrand, when in fact the old name has more impact and value in image. But for corporate laws and legal reasons they have to find a new identity.

Example : Selling the company, assets , everything but the copy righted name.

I know a couple silicon valley executives who sold companie and wanted to protect their faithful employees so they sold to the employees with hold back s and retained all copyrights ,names ,corporate rights so if the program did not work out in the repayment process .

They could restart the company under original status. one of them eventually got the company back. I have known some in past with huge attorney bills and process's to make the sale. Months and Months of time for the process.

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #2
Mar 20, 2013

So iomega is now LenovoEMC.... Yes, I think it's silly. I also appreciate the warning.

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Jeffrey Hinckley
Mar 20, 2013

You can see what Schneider did to Pelco (quality definitely suffered). My goto WLAN product, Meraki, just got gobbled up by Cisco. Half the IP cameras on the market are available through Amazon for $5 more than we pay for it. I am beginning to hate corporate America and may as well just invent, produce, and exclusively use my own branded products.

BH
Bohan Huang
Apr 10, 2013

What about LenEMC or LEMC or anything else! How the hell and am I supposed to say lenovoemc say what???

I also believe that any respectable nerd that knows about floppy disks knows about IOMEGA Zip drives - they where SO hot back then - oh the the old days!

Jeffrey: I feel your pain - but this is the fault of the camera brand/manufactuer in question - not corporate America per se - brands like Veracity and Milestone take much better care of their channel customers. Then again - most brands that become very highly respected eventually go down this path - they begun to feel powerful and decide the channel no longer have value to them - and start pushing straight the end-users via Amazon by cutting distributor and/or integrator margins.

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