Y, oh Y?
Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the Y is no longer the YMCA - it’s just the Y. Y? Because “Y” has become the brand, and the MCA has withered away rotten roots, I guess. But roots they were: the M was a reminder that this was a place that made distinctions based on gender, the C stood for the cultural grounding in a specific tradition, and the A - well, it provided a nice way to finish off the acronym, letting it soar a little instead of clunking back to earth with a D or an F. The name is so engrained in the culture I don’t have to tell you what any of those letters stand for.
The name change only goes for the national organization. Here’s the explanation:
The change is part of a marketing plan to encourage people to take a new look at the Y's services. According to News 14 Charlotte, a "two-year study found while most people know what the YMCA is, they don't know exactly what the Y does."
And this will help? At least it’s not as bad as the corporate rebranding that swept the land in the 70s and 80s, when perfectly fine names like Amalgamated Jute & Copper or National Brick were convinced to change their names to Sylvanix or Accela - airy gaseous words that gave no indication what the company did, and were usually accompanied by an abstract logo that looked like someone held a crayon in his mouth and doodled on a coffee stain. I miss those old names. They had a sturdy sound; they stood for smokestacks and the Arsenal of Democracy. Guys with lunchpails streamed out of the gates of places like Consolidated Ambergris; when you hear “Accenture” you see only a khaki-clad drones who spend their day in puce-hued cubicles moving numbers around a screen.
Anyway: if you’re wondering whether this will affect the Village People, they’ve already issued a press release assuring people they’ll continue to play YMCA, and people will continue to form the letters with their hands at sporting events and karaoke bars, unaware of the song’s salacious intent. (“You can hang out with all the boys,” indeed.) The Village People, however, are not happy:
"We are deeply dismayed by today's announcement from the YMCA that they feel a name change and a rebranding are in order after 166 years. Some things remain iconic and while we admire the organization for the work they do, we still can't help but wonder Y."
Roger that. Any great brands you recall that were turned into mush? Aside from Pennsylvania Mush and Gruel, that is.
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May '10
Re: Y, oh Y?
Well British Petroleum comes to mind. Oh wait. I guess that's not what you meant. Funny though to see them rapidly rebranding all the U.S. gas stations into Arco. Arco is a brand I always liked as a kid. They once had a promotion where you got a big plastic ark and then every fill-up resulted in another pair of animals.
May '10
Re: Y, oh Y?
I appreciate the KFC locations that still list the full "Kentucky Friend Chicken" moniker. Though I understand the health angle of downplaying how Fried their menu items are, it strikes me as reassuring when a restaurant's name affirms that the meat-like products they sell legally qualify as Chicken.
May '10
Re: Y, oh Y?
Woops, Friend Chicken... that comment was unintentionally dark!
Re: Y, oh Y?
That's okay, Jason - I meant to say "withered away like rotten roots." Which can be had at KFC, by the way - batter-dipped and deep-fried. Deelicious.
Re: Y, oh Y?
Radio Shack rebranded as "The Shack" which, for me, shifted its feel from quaint geek to unabomber hideout. "Shack" isn't the most euphonious term, so why emphasize it? And it's not like anyone called it that in casual conversation.
Similarly, Pizza Hut shortened its name to "The Hut." Yes, I'm a geek, but I can't be the only one adding "Jabba" to the start of that formulation.
Re: Y, oh Y?
Yeah, well, whenever anyone "rebrands," it's always because there's something they're not too proud of in the old brand. KFC took on the intials so people would forget the "Fried" part. Philip Morris became Altria so people would forget the lung cancer part. British Petroleum did the same thing -- they became "BP" so people didn't keep using the "P" word. And they adopted that idiotic sunny logo, like they were some kind of juice company. Fat lot of good it did them.
My guess is that the YMCA prefers just the "Y" because they're a little uncomfortable with the "C."
Jun '10
Re: Y, oh Y?
I don't know if you can really blame Bell Telephone for turning to mush. They were constantly being dragged into court and broken up against their will into baby bells, then moved back under the umbrella of American Telephone & Telegraph, which come to think of it, is never thought of as anything but AT&T. Lots of girls my age skipped college to walk or take a bus over the bridge into Newark and work for Bell Tel. I also remember Esso gas stations before they became Exxon.
May '10
Re: Y, oh Y?
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing dropped all the words and just became 3M, which now stands for nothing in particular.
May '10
Re: Y, oh Y?
Personally, I prefer words to acronyms, like Mo' Better Chicken (a fine fried chicken establishment I noticed in an Atlanta airport) or Fannies (I was saddened to learn it is not the best little whorehouse in Texas but instead a humble dance hall).
May '10
Re: Y, oh Y?
Rob Long: My guess is that the YMCA prefers just the "Y" because they're a little uncomfortable with the "C." · Jul 14 at 7:38pm
Bingo.
Re: Y, oh Y?
Stickershock: that's amusing, because Esso itself was a rebranding. I suppose you could say the same about Conoco and Texaco, but at least those names had a brusque practical connotation - we're too durned busy gettin' erl out of the ground to pronounce the whole danged name.
Rob: I hated BP's rebranding. Those signs that said "Beyond Petroleum" - feh! It's like Playboy saying "Beyond photoshopped pictures of naked women." Customers are either confused, doubtful, or both.
May '10
Re: Y, oh Y?
I understand that NPR is just NPR, and is no longer "National Public Radio." Soon they will be called "N."
May '10
Re: Y, oh Y?
As usual, I am with Rob with regard to his "not proud" observation.
But I also have to wonder at their overall justification. Here in Virginia, the nice, shiny YMCA (that's right, I said it!) that we are members of is in no need of additional advertising. Every time that they do a "membership drive", my wife bemoans the fact that "they already have too many people there". And allegedly the nice, shiny YMCA in the city in Georgia we are moving to next week is also constantly crowded.
Perhaps they are outliers, but in our experience they don't need a rebranding to draw in a crowd....
Jun '10
Re: Y, oh Y?
I think Esso was the phonetic spelling of SO (Standard Oil.) The font was very chubby & rounded. I guess the angular Exxon logo design fit in better with the sharp-cornered lines of modern cars of the time. I do like when a company name or logo has a real connection to the product. How about Sinclair gas stations, with the brontosaurus?
I toured Edison's labs in West Orange, NJ yesterday. The variety of machines is amazing, & it's interesting to note that the company names branded on them are very no nonsense, no frills descriptions of the company's mission. We make gauges. We make gears. We make engines. Nothing nebulous or new agey.
Re: Y, oh Y?
The only initial that the PR/HR mind thinks sells today stands for Young. I think of Woodrow Wilson's YMCA speech:
Jul '10
Re: Y, oh Y?
Rebranding is one of those crazes that sweep through bureaucratic organizations at intervals. One that I recall was the Mission Statement. Thousands of hours were wasted at dozens of meetings at the company where I worked to come up with a few innocuous sentences that were never again mentioned by anybody. This business kept the HR people happy and occupied, however.
May '10
Re: Y, oh Y?
Trace - ARCO itself is a rebranding, of sorts. My father-in-law still calls the local station "Richfield", and there must be another father-in-law somewhere out there who calls his local station "Atlantic".
Jun '10
Re: Y, oh Y?
Wait a minute, Mark. Where would our society be without 3M's Post-it Notes?
Jul '10
Re: Y, oh Y?
Somewhere along the way - perhaps in the late 70s and 80s Mr. Lileks mentions - a fundamental shift occured, away from names tat told you what the company did or made, and towards names that sought to instill a vague, generalized, positive image that actually actively obscured what they do.
I believe this reflects a larger trend in advertising/marketing. The same one that has led to every corporate web site having hordes of young, shiny, smiling morons grinning at the viewer. A pox on all of it! I want an ad that tells me why I should buy the product. I want a company name that tells me what the company makes.
May '10
Re: Y, oh Y?
Amen. We are acronym happy in today's world. What is wrong with a full name anyway? I would not want my first and last name being all I went by!