“A Bad Apple Day?” – What’s in a name?

Aviva
Aviva, the world’s fifth largest insurance company set a drift 200 years of trusted history, namely the UK insurance giant, Norwich Union. Aviva, along with many companies these days, is moving to operate under one single worldwide name .

Tropicana
Tropicana had been using the ‘straw in orange’ image on their cartons for years to send their message of ”fresh, straight-from-the-orange juice”. It was easily identifiable, it did a great job communicating their brand and the companys values. So why did Tropicana choose to rebrand and do away with it?

Putting to one side the costs involved in actually creating a re-brand (By the way, sales of Tropicana hit the floor: between January 1 and February 22; they were down 20%!), what’s in it for a company, and how important is a name?

The ‘iphone 5′
The iPhone 5 did not arrive on Tuesday. Apple’s “Let’s Talk iPhone” event led to the announcement of the iPhone 4S, cloud services and a new iOS 5. With headines such as “Apple unveils refreshed iPhone 4S, but no iPhone 5″ and ”Apple shares fall after new iPhone launch” – what’s in a name? Now, don’t get me wrong, the iphone 4s is an excellent product with an improved camera and significantly extended battery life. It will run the latest iOS5 operating system, which is set for release on 12 October, but did Apple slip-up in not calling it the iphone5? Why was it not called the iphone 5?

The event was also the first major announcement for new boss Tim Cook who took over from Steve Jobs in August – was all this too much, too soon? The BBC stated:

“Other industry watchers were less charitable about the iPhone refresh, and the non-appearance of the iPhone 5. Gareth Beavis, phones editor at ‘TechRadar’ said that the new hardware would leave many people underwhelmed. It was quite disappointing. I think there is going to be a lot of anger from users expecting something big bold and quite exciting after a long time of waiting from the iPhone 4.” …more

With the launch of tablets such as the ‘Kindle Fire’ holding its own against the ‘iPad’ and Samsung's ‘Galaxy SII’ reporting sales of over 10 millions units, was the ‘iPhone 4S’ launch just a negative blip for ‘Apple’, a bad day at the office, or was it more a serious missed opportunity, a full-on ‘Bad Apple Day?’