- Brian Morrissey

NEW YORK Four years after combining media shop Avenue A with Web design agency Razorfish, Avenue A/Razorfish has decided to be known as Razorfish.
 
The Seattle-based shop painted the name change as an acknowledgement that Razorfish enjoys a stronger brand reputation than Avenue A.
 
"Both brands represented innovation and speed to market, and they still do so today," Razorfish CEO Clark Kokich said in a statement. "Nevertheless, we are making it easier to do business with us by using a single name."
 
The decision is a turnabout of the circumstances when the two companies combined. Avenue A parent company aQuantive bought Razorfish, then known as SBI Razorfish. In the dot-com era, Avenue A was the little-known direct response shop to the high-flying Razorfish. Yet in the aftermath of the dot-com collapse, Avenue A's metrics-oriented approach flourished while Razorfish struggled. Avenue A bought Razorfish for a mere $160 million, a fraction of what the company was once valued.
 
Since then, the shop has grown to 2,200 employees from 800, thanks in part to several international acquisitions. Microsoft bought the agency, along with fellow aQuantive companies Atlas and DrivePM, for $6 billion in May 2007. Since then, Razorfish has operated as an independent entity while Atlas and DrivePM were integrated into Microsoft.