雅虎更名“Altaba”有感

The good news: Yahoo clearly has not spent a cent devising “Altaba”, the new name for the investment company that will be left after the operating business is sold to Verizon. The bankers’ working title of “RemainCo” is hardly less exciting.在将主营业务出售给Verizon公司后，雅虎(Yahoo)只剩的投资公司将改名为“Altaba”。好消息是：雅虎在设计Altaba的公司名时似乎没有花上一分钱。该公司之前的暂定为名称“RemainCo”令人兴奋的程度一点也不逊色。

Further good news: the people who came up with what seems to be a combination of “alternative” and “Alibaba” (Yahoo’s stake in which is its most valuable asset) did not decide to call the new company “Alibernative”.更大的好消息是：想要出有这个奇特是“alternative”（替代物）与“Alibaba”（雅虎持有人的阿里巴巴股份是其最有价值的资产）结合体的名称的人，没要求给新的公司取名为“Alibernative”。The bad news: one underwhelming naming ceremony does not signal an end to wilder rebrandings.坏消息是：一场平淡无奇的命名仪式并不意味著更加可怕的重命名的完结。Fuelled by the never-ending cycle of mergers and demergers, inventing new names is an annuity business for brand gurus and a dependable source of nonsensical justifications from the marketing department.在企业拆分、拆分的无休止循环的推展下，发明者新的名称出了品牌大师们的一项赚年金的业务，而企业营销部门对于新的名称如何高深不会得出层出不穷的可笑说明。

I thought this sector had reached a low point in 2014, when PwC rebranded Booz Company, the consultancy it had bought, as Strategy. But the past year has seen the birth of Conduent, which sounds more like an intimate skin balm than the business process services group that was part of Xerox. Arconic, which makes multi-material products for aerospace groups and carmakers and emerged from Alcoa, could be an old-fashioned cocktail mixer. In fact, according to the group, the A stands for Alcoa, the “arc” for the “arc of progress”, and the “conic” alludes to the iconic products the company produces.我以为这一行业在2014年转入了低潮期，当时，普华永道(PwC)将其并购的咨询公司博斯(Booz Company)改名为Strategy。但过去一年还问世了一家取名为Conduent的公司，听得一起更加像一款偷窥的护肤膏，而非施乐(Xerox)旗下的业务流程服务集团。

Arconic是一家拆分自美国铝业(Alcoa)并为航空航天集团和汽车制造商获取多材料产品的公司，其名称听得一起更加像一种老式鸡尾酒混合器。实质上，按该集团的众说纷纭，A代表美国铝业，“arc”代表“变革弧线”，而“conic”暗指该公司生产的标志性产品。Whatever. History suggests that if a company is successful, people do get used to its new handle, however outlandish it seems at first (think of Accenture or Diageo, at first ribbed for their portmanteau brands).随意怎么说。历史经验指出，只要企业取得成功，人们就不会习惯于它的新名称，无论这个名字最初听得一起多么怪异——想要一想当初因用于合成词作为品牌名称而遭到嘲讽的Accenture（埃森哲）或Diageo（帝亚吉欧）。

The people I usually pity in rebranding exercises are the front-line employees. They suffer the indignity of having to explain themselves — and their new name — long after the marketing department has packed away the jargon and the branded freebies. For instance, I can only imagine the pain of staff at “Everything Everywhere” before that 2010 telecoms joint venture was renamed EE.在公司品牌重塑的过程中，我一般来说较为同情的是一线员工。在营销部门将宣传行话和印着品牌名称的免费赠品缴一起很幸以后，他们还被迫费力向别人说明自己及公司的新名称。例如，我可以想象合资电信公司Everything Everywhere的员工在2010年公司改名为EE后的伤痛。

Yahoo looked an odd brand at first — though co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo’s original name “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” was never going to last. Still, the brand was enough to energise its early hires. According to Karen Angel’s book Inside Yahoo!, published in 2002, the group’s first head of marketing even replanted her garden to bloom in Yahoo’s purple and yellow colours.雅虎最初听得一起也有些古怪——虽然公司创始人杨定远(Jerry Yang)和戴维?费罗(David Filo)最初自由选择的公司名“Jerrys Guide to the World Wide Web”（杰瑞的万维网指南）预见会持久。不过，这一品牌不足以鼓舞公司早期的员工。

据凯伦?安吉尔(Karen Angel) 2002年出版发行的《雅虎内幕》(Inside Yahoo!)一书叙述，该集团首任营销主管甚至在自家花园中栽种了象征物雅虎紫色和黄色的花。Those flowers have long since wilted. Now, my sympathies are with the staff who will continue to work at the operating businesses, under the unchanged Yahoo banner, rather than the few who will run Altaba. As the once-mighty internet group’s reputation suffers slow death by a billion data breaches, a rebrand, however dull or wacky, would probably come as a merciful relief to Yahoo’s job-seeking employees.那些花上早就衰败。现在，我开始同情那些顶着雅虎旧名之后专门从事主营业务的员工，而不是少数将运营Altaba的员工。

随着这家曾盛极一时的互联网集团因10亿用户数据泄漏而声誉日渐毁坏，新的名称——不管多么无趣或怪异——对于雅虎忙着去找新的工作的员工来说也许是仁慈的众生。

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