From Twitter to X – and other brand changes that still bother us

This week, seemingly on a whim, South African emerald mine heir and s**tposting meme monkey Elon Musk renamed Twitter “X”. Last year (it feels like 10 years ago) Musk borrowed $44 billion (€39.5 billion) to purchase the microblogging site after a court case embarrassed him into honouring an offer that what was probably initially meant as a hilarious jape. He subsequently alienated Twitter’s advertisers and primary users by facilitating the site’s most trollish users.

He claims to be intent on turning “X” into an “everything app”, much like the Chinese government-controlled WeChat or the computer in Logan’s Run. He has long had an obsession with the letter X (SpaceX, Tesla Model X, his earlier projects were X themed; one of his children is genuinely called X Æ A-Xii) and doesn’t seem to be worried that the only other major brands to use the letter are Marvel superheroes, defunct punk bands and internet pornographers.

Here at The Irish Times, we like things to stay the same, so here are some other brand changes that still bother us.

Marathon to Snickers

Although it was just the British and Irish brand name for a tasty peanut and nougat snack, the name Marathon spoke of man’s stoical ability to take on all manner of marathon-like challenges while gnawing on lumps of succulent hydrogenated fat. The American variant, Snickers, in contrast, was named after the Mars family’s favourite horse, even though the recipe contains no horse whatsoever (it possibly did originally). Snickers ultimately displaced the name Marathon in all foreign markets, to the horror of Marathon-loving purists across these green and pleasant markets. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth, although the teeth were gnashing on peanut and nougat. But Snickers tastes like ashes in my mouth now. It has a mouthfeel redolent of American cultural imperialism and horse-related gibberish.

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Facebook to Meta

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are both, in a sense, our disappointing weird sons, the final mutant innovators of our civilisation, which is on fire. While Musk has been knocking Zuckerberg off the front page with intriguing acts of grotesque goonery, it’s important not to forget about Zuckerberg. He’s on a reputation-immolating roll too. He has over the last decade lost his mystique as a visionary futurist in order to gain a reputation as a data-mining, strong-man-enabling, surveillance capitalist.

So in 2021, a chastened, praise-hungry Zuckerberg, announced that he was now embarking on a new mission. He was going to turn the internet into a virtual reality, digital prison, the Metaverse, in which smiley, legless avatars of humanity could wander aimlessly instead of going outside or meeting their friends. He marked all this by doing a big PR push and rebranding Facebook’s corporate name “Meta” (I think “corporate name” is like a “street name”, but for businesspeople). He proceeded to lose $13.72 billion (€12.32 billion) on the project in one year and Meta lost nearly $700 billion (€628.5 billion) off its valuation because people didn’t really want to live in a computer.

Prince to the Artist Formerly Known as Prince

Prince changed his name to The Artist Formerly Known as Prince when he was in a contract dispute with Warner Bros Music in the mid-90s. It’s a little like the way your uncle argues that the judge isn’t using his “true legal name” when he’s representing himself in the circuit court over all those parking fines and harassment charges. The difference, of course, is that your uncle is not as funky as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince who was, let there be no doubt, canonically, indisputably and legally funky. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince reclaimed the name Prince once he signed to Arista records later in the decade and balance was restored to the universe in all its cosmic funkiness. It would be churlish at this point to point out that he’s also not a real prince.

Windscale to Sellafield

A humble mom and pop nuclear plant on the Cumbrian coast, Windscale got a bad reputation thanks to a few minor accidents (a little fire that spread radioactivity in 1957, for example) and complaints from the neighbours as well as the same old environmentalists who are always ruining our fun. Cunningly, the management changed the name from Windscale to Sellafield in 1981 and, as far as I can tell, nobody’s had a problem with the place since.

Sackville Street to O’Connell Street

Sackville Street was renamed O’Connell Street in honour of radical community organiser and activist Daniel O’Connell in 1924, after a little bit of bother over the preceding decade that I’d really prefer not to talk about. Who is left to speak for 18th century Lord Lieutenant Lionel Sackville, 1st Duke of Dorset now? As you might imagine, in The Irish Times we cannot stand over such disrespect for our nation’s history and thus continue to call it Sackville Street in defiance of such trendy “wokery”.

Telecom Éireann to Eircom to Eir

Every year, Irish families have a day, where they take out their Eircom share documentation and mutter darkly to their children. You see, once upon a time we owned a telecoms company called Telecom Éireann. Then our leaders had an idea: why don’t we sell the company to ourselves? The 1990s was a different time. All over the western world governments were doing stuff like this thanks to helpful people who knew the markets and were totally trustworthy. In the process of doing so, our leaders reasoned, we could turn ourselves into savvy citizen investors like those in Utopian United States.

In order to make Telecom Éireann look new and shiny, they renamed it Eircom which was just the last syllable of the first word coupled with the first of the second but probably still cost us a fortune. More than half a million people bought shares after the government suggested it and most lost a lot of their money. Then there was a long period in which what might have been useful public infrastructure was bought, asset-stripped and burdened with debt a few times. In 2015, Eircom relaunched as Eir. They did so with a bodhrán-and-sean-nós soundtracked ad evoking the GAA, the wonder of nature and the laughter of children. It was designed to help us forget that we hated them and to help them forget that they hated us. Nonetheless, each year on Eircom Shares Day we take out our stock documents and remember.

Andersen Consulting to Accenture

Let’s be clear (seriously, this is important legal stuff) Andersen Consulting is not the same as Arthur Anderson the auditors who were embroiled in the Enron scandal at the turn of the last century. In fact, the two had schismed fractiously some time before. Anderson Consulting had nothing to do with Enron and changed its name shortly before the scandal broke (thanks to a legal agreement with their former sister company). It was good timing in retrospect. They went with the makey-up word “Accenture” which apparently signifies “accent on the future”. This is the sort of gold that you can expect when you have the Accenture consultants crawling around your company rationalising things, converting waste into profit, dreams into pie charts and good old-fashioned human labour into $$$.

TV3 to Virgin Media and the Point to the 3Arena

Look, we still call it TV3. They’d do well to change back. See also: the 3Arena which is what they call the Point now. It’s always going to be the Point and there’s nothing they can do about that. In fact, as death takes me 80 years or so from now, my last words will be: “I still call it the Point.”

The working and middle classes to the ‘squeezed middle’

Once upon a time there were two distinct groups in political life that you could constructively contend with whether you were a rabid capitalist or a virulent Marxist: the comfortable bourgeoisie and the repressed working people. Thanks to the “third way” politics of the early 21st century, however, these categories have been rebranded with a single term that’s way better: the squeezed middle. Are you a person who is, financially-speaking, working class but feels no class solidarity with those who share your plight because you are special? Congratulations! You are in the squeezed middle. Are you a close-to-upper class person who is sad because you can’t afford to have a fifth car and find that servants are getting expensive? Hooray! You are also in the squeezed middle. Everyone is in the squeezed middle! That’s the beauty of this inclusive rebrand. And now, with this woolly demographic diagnosis to work with, let me conjure up some vague and unsatisfying policy ideas that mean none of you will be happy.

Superquinn Sausages to Superquinn Sausages

When SuperValu acquired the now defunct Superquinn brand, the one thing they couldn’t change was the name of the Superquinn sausage. Before artisanal food was thought possible in Ireland, there were Superquinn sausages. Put those sausages into a SuperValu packet and they suddenly seem . . . ordinary. With Superquinn branding, however, those sausages achieve a wonderful heady allure. I mean, if I was to tell you that at my wedding we served nothing but Superquinn sausages – starter, main course, sides, dessert – part of you would be appalled but another, deeper, more sensitive part, wishes you were at that wedding and thinks that I’m very classy guy.