PwC Consulting to be 'Monday' in $110m rebranding

Ask someone to name their least favourite words. The chances are that "Monday" will come somewhere on the list.

Not so for the consultancy arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which has decided to rename itself after the most maligned day of the week in a $110 million (€116 million) rebranding.

The consultancy is separating from the accountancy firm through a share offering expected this summer. It said yesterday it would, thereafter, be known as Monday.

For many, the word Monday suggests alarm clocks and curtailed fun just as surely as dentist connotes pain.

The feeling has been expressed in pop songs such as Manic Monday, by the Bangles, and I Don't Like Mondays, by the Boomtown Rats.

To PwC Consulting, however, Monday inspires images of "fresh thinking, doughnuts, hot coffee".

Monday, it reckons, galvanises people to "wake up early" and "expect chemistry".

In one of the slogans designed to gee up staff and clients about the name change, the company says: "Sharpen your pencil, iron your crispy white shirts, set the alarm clock, relish the challenge, listen, be fulfilled, make an impact, take a risk."

Mr Greg Brenneman, chief executive of PwC Consulting, said Monday benefits from being "a real word, concise, recognisable, global".

Companies have increasingly come under fire for making up meaningless words such as Accenture for their titles. Consignia, the renamed UK Post Office, is likely this week to revert to its historic name, Royal Mail.

On the plus side, the new name for PwC Consulting represents another departure from previous branding crazes, in that there are no rogue capital letters.

The $110 million renaming budget covers the cost of tasks such as advertising the new name in newspapers and changing corporate letterheads. Mr Wolff Olins, the brand consultant, helped devise the new image.

A person close to the naming process appeared unperturbed by the negative connotations of the word Monday, hinting at a "paradigm shift" in the way the beginning of the week is perceived.

But the debate will be irrelevant in those countries whose working week does not begin on Monday.

In those territories, PwC Consulting's new identity will never be synonymous with crispy white shirts, fresh thinking and hot coffee.