British investment firm Aberdeen has finally conceded that dropping vowels from your name doesn't actually make you cool or "digitally-enabled." After four years of forcing people to stare confusedly at "abrdn" while their brains short-circuited trying to pronounce it, the 200-year-old company revealed its innovative chops by putting the e's back.
According to The New York Times, the company's CEO Jason Windsor admitted it was time to "remove distractions" – corporate speak for "I'm off to 5 Hertford Street for a quick nip with Lord Snowdenshireham. Fire a few pillocks in the naming department while I'm out."
"The 200-year-old company is now called aberdeen group, effectively reversing a decision to rebrand as abrdn in 2021 in a bid to pitch itself as a 'modern, agile, digitally-enabled brand.'"
Nothing says "modern and agile" like a name that looks like someone fell asleep on their keyboard.
Shockingly, this brilliant strategy didn't catapult them to the top of the finance world.
The Times points out this is just one in a long line of corporate rebrand disasters, like when the British Post Office briefly renamed itself "Consignia" (I swear this is what the Olive Garden calls their bread sticks).
Linguistics expert Dr. Laura Bailey from the University of Kent dropped this truth bomb:
"Often, when companies try to appear trendy, 'by the time they get to it, it's been around for too long,' Dr. Bailey said. 'It's like your parents doing it — it doesn't seem right.'"
In other words, nothing says "How do you do, fellow kids?" quite like a 200-year-old financial institution dropping vowels from its name.
Previously:
• Russia's former Lego stores rebrand as 'World of Cubes'
• Interpol's bizarre attempt to rebrand major online fraud scheme
• Baseball team rebrands to honor Oregon's famed Exploding Whale
• Wild popularity of CBD forces Christian bookseller to rebrand
• Trump hotels, faced with massive declines in bookings, rebrand as 'Scion Hotels'
