August 11, 2009
need batteries today sir
8/11/09
Get out your absinthe bongs, fire up your heroin spoons and get ready to do a line of blow off a hooker's ass: RADIO SHACK IS RE-BRANDING!!! That's right, our trusty Radio Shack is shaking off the doldrums and becoming THE SHACK! Of course, you can only say "The Shack" while looking like Buddy Christ:
Seriously, is there anything more reprehensible than a corporation trying to wiggle their way into colloquial YoungPeopleSpeak? It always sounds like your parents talking about using The Twitter to send an email. Let's also not forget the endless focus groups and millions of dollars that went into this "repositioning of the brand" - all that work to end up with a name that evokes a place you get date-raped, rather than a store that sells the electronic WowWee™ Alive™ Panda Bear Cub.
"Radio Shack" is just fine as a name, and certainly no more stupid than "Chuck E. Cheese's" or "Hammacher Schlemmer". Companies always think their problems can be fixed by spackle and signage, rather than an honest look at the changing retail world they're living in. As I've said before around here, I always thought Radio Shack would continue to exist for another 400 years, because someone always needs a 1/8" jack-to-stereo RCA adapter and 50 feet of ethernet cable, and they need it NOW.
Best of luck, "The Shack". I will continue to haunt your aisles; I'm always on the lookout for a good coaxial coupler or a 15-amp ceramic microwave oven fuse. But rest assured I will roll my eyes in disdainful superiority as I pass by your "reinvigorated corporate signage" and "brand revitalization" en route to the HEXBUG™ Micro Robotic Inchworm.
Posted by Ian Williams at August 11, 2009 11:20 PMWhat's the point of just dropping one word in the name? My favorite "brand revitalization" is Kentucky Fried Chicken changing to just KFC. Didn't everyone call it KFC anyway?
How about companies that make up nice sounding names in order to make people forget their original name because they've had some sort of scandal or people have a negative view of the corporation.
Altria = Philip Morris
Accenture = Arthur Andersen Consulting
Remember when Esso (great name; homonym for initials of Standard Oil) became Exxon, which meant nothing? They thought it was more hip or modern or something. Oy. You're all probably too young. But I was not pleased!
Consumerist.com covered the "Shack" name change; their article is very short but the comments are great.
http://consumerist.com/5329801/radio-shacks-rebrands-as-the-shack
Ian, I feel the same way. I have been a Radio Shack loyalist for my entire life, always needing a new whip antenna for a short wave radio or checking out the new scanners. It will be hard not to laugh while shopping at "The Shack," but I'll do it anyway. Hopefully they'll keep hiring the nerdiest of the nerdy teenagers to guide me to the right aisle for the caoxial cables.
Does anyone but me think that the Cool Jesus looks an awful lot like the Burger King king? Anyone? Bueller?
I read somewhere recently that Pizza Hut is changing its name to "The Hut." Similarly lame.
Maybe radio is a dead word and really is no longer descriptive of what they do... I don't blame them... I am not sure their business model will change that much.... you should be able to get the same old crazy sprockets...I mean sockets (sorry Steve).
More disturbing is the Shack partnering with Lance Armstrong for next year...
Cool Jesus is from "Dogma" correct? Loved that movie.
But Ian, are you telling me that I can't solve this tough economic environment with spackle and signage?
I just blew $50k on a new sign along the highway - dammit!
I think "the Shack" sounds vaguely creepy. And speaking of creepy, that's not "Cool Jesus;" it's "Buddy Christ" from Dogma....
Most corporate re-branding (including this one) seems completely stupid, the desperate thrashing of a fish out of water.
Esso had to change its name for a bunch of other reasons too, some of them legal...it is pretty interesting.
I bought my first transistor radio from Radio Shack in the early '80s and used to hang it off the handlebars of my bike. It was under 10 bucks. You could take the back off it and mess around with the little transistors.
In my magicalawesome dream universe, Radio Shack would license the Ackbar and Jeff characters from Matt Groening and re-brand themselves as Ackbar and Jeff's Radio Hut.
In any case, 'The Shack' is the lamest attempt to spruce up a brand since the SciFi Channel became SyFy a few weeks ago. Sigh.
Also, Pizza Hut has adopted a secondary branding mark of 'The Hut,' but they haven't announced plans to do a complete re-branding. My guess is that they don't have a clue what to do with their image, but they're kicking around a bunch of new media strategies, and they're hoping to slowly introduce 'The Hut' to make it feel like it happened organically, or like it emerged directly from those crazy texting young people in their markets.
And my guess is their dream is to get Shaq to be their spokesperson. If you call one of their stores do they answer with "the shack?"
"The Shack"?Sounds to me like a little ol' place where we can get together....
Good call, Mr. (The) Budster... I'll fix it in the entry.
The one here still uses paper forms and receipts in triplicate and is in a gawd-awful location.
They always ask for your home address and phone and it takes them 10 minutes to fill out the stupid forms just so you can buy an adaptor that costs $2.42.
I go there but only as a last resort.
I am a software engineer. I love going there so they can explain technology to me.
I'll see your "Buddy Jesus" and raise you a "Touchdown Jesus".
http://tinyurl.com/footballjesus
*Ahem* "The City"? *Ahem*
We always called Natural Light "Natty Light" and now they've rebranded it as such, even trying to make it hip.
Try as they will, ad nauseum, I will NEVER call National Geographic "Nat Geo" as they're so so hell-bent upon renaming themselves.
I've always lived by the credo that you can't give yourself a nickname but if one is foisted upon you, go for it. To that end, KFC gets a pass as does Natty Light but I've never heard ANYONE call Radio Shack "The Shack". Bill Maher did a bit on The Shack last week too.
And living in Chicago, don't even get me started on Macy's erasing 154 years of Marshall Field's history and The Sears Tower now trying to be called The Willis Tower.
I'm with Tammy O. SyFy's rebranding was the one that pushed me over the edge. Maybe they should have gone for a different homophone -- the one that sums up my reaction to rebranding in general:
*SIGH* Fie!