The age of silly names

‘Sharpen your pencil, iron your crispy white shirts, set the alarm clock, relish the challenge, be fulfilled, make an impact, take a risk.’ That’s how PwC pitched its consulting operation a few years ago, before its demerger and sale to IBM. The firm was to be called ‘Monday,’ readers will remember, in perhaps one of the shortest and silliest re-brandings of recent times.

IBM, TS understands, bought the rights to the use of the term. We only mention this because there is a new charity lottery in town, going by the same name.

Did it have to fork out to IBM for the use of the precious term, we wonder? We’re working on finding out and will keep you posted.

As an aside, whatever happened to the age of re-branding? We’ve seen no exciting new and silly names for companies in years, and are getting quite cheesed off about it. But silly names aside, those Andersen Consulting troops got the best deal of the lot, ditching the name that linked it to the then soon-to-be doomed Big Five firm, for Accenture.