Proudly unveiling a disemvowelled company name, Abrdn chief executive Stephen Bird said the change from Standard Life Aberdeen created a brand that was “modern, agile and digitally enabled”. Quite why consonants are agile and vowels are stiff is not immediately obvious. In truth, the renaming of Standard Life Aberdeen does make sense, but the strange choice tells us something important about the relationship of business to the society in which it is hosted.
The creation of Abrdn has immediately joined the list of infamously ludicrous corporate renaming. The top prize will never be taken from the Post Office. In 2001, explaining why the company had dropped a name that had served it since it was created in 1660, John Roberts, the chief executive, said that Consignia “describes the full scope of what the Post Office does in a way that the words ‘post’ and ‘office’ cannot”. The public decided that the words post and office were entirely comprehensible, thank you very much, and “Consignia” lasted just a year. Meanwhile, Andersen Consulting really thinks that the neologism Accenture will make people think of “an accent upon the future”. And Philip Morris tried to become Altria. Maybe it could be Phlp Mrrs. That would fool us into thinking it doesn’t sell cigarettes.
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