Me - Hey, how about Colonel Sanders for dinner?
Grandson - What's that?
Me - You know, Colonel Sanders. Kentucky Fried Chicken.
GS - [long pause] Oh! KFC. Sure.
I know the kids tend to refer to everything by initials (I blame texting) but I was still surprised my grandson didn't know the actual name of his favorite chicken place. Until my husband got home with the meal and I noticed all the packages sported the same image- three big red letters: KFC.
Curiosity led me to do a little quick research and I discovered Colonel Sanders' Kentucky Fried Chicken changed it's name officially to KFC in 1999. I guess I wasn't paying attention that year. Or any of the years since then. *hangs head in embarrassment*
But while I was checking out the brand name change at KFC, I came across a couple others you might find interesting.
Ever heard of Brad's Drink? In 1893, a pharmacist named Celeb Bradham invented a carbonated soft drink which included sugar, cola nuts, and the digestive enzyme pepsin. I guess he thought that last one was important because in 1898 he re-named his invention Pepsi-Cola.
How about Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web? In January 1994, Jerry Yang and David Filo, PhD students at Stanford, created what became one of the most prominent search engines on the web. They later renamed it Yahoo, an acronym for
"Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle".
Okay, one more. Do you know BackRub? The search engine created by Larry Brin and Serge Page’s technology in 1996 was called BackRub because the system verified backlinks to determine the
significance of a site. I think you've probably used this one. In 1998, they changed the name to Google.
Have you ever had the urge to change your "brand" name?
[I didn't include any images in this post because they would have been big corporate logos and I didn't want to commit a no-no against any of these guys.]
Thought for the Day:
We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.
