Facebook Debuted Its New Name Amid Its Biggest PR Crisis. Will the Timing Hurt or Help?

As anyone who’s watched the consumer products landscape for more than a few years can tell you, changing a brand’s name is among the trickiest maneuvers in marketing. The new name must be easy to say. It can’t have any confusing associations or other baggage. It should be memorable, too, and big enough to fill the shoes of the brand name it’s replacing. But the toughest part of changing a company name might be choosing when to do it. Just ask author, NYU Stern professor and veteran branding expert Allen Adamson. “The most important thing with a name change is to execute it really well,” he said, “and part of executing it really well is to launch it at the right time.” Inevitably, this swings the spotlight to the name change that’s been in the news since late last week: Meta—the new corporate name for Facebook, announced on Oct. 28 at the company’s Connect 2021 virtual event. Leaving aside the merits of the Meta name itself, it might seem a little strange that a technology colossus worth $1.2 trillion that’s had the same name for 17 years would choose a time like this to announce a new one. Facebook Dives Full Speed Ahead Into the Metaverse With Its Name Change to Meta After all, as it faces the growing specter of federal regulation and bandages its wounds over whistleblower Frances Haugen’s testimony in Congress, Facebook is already the least trusted company in America, according to a 2018 survey by Toluna Influencers. No doubt painfully aware of this backdrop, Mark Zuckerberg last week moved to quell any suspicions that the name change was designed to distract from his company’s troubles. “With all the scrutiny and public debate, some of you may be wondering why we’re doing this now," he said. "We live for what we’re building and, while we make mistakes, we’re always learning and building and moving forward.” Stripped of the PR gloss, Zuckerberg seemed to be saying that—controversy be damned—he’s focused on the future. And the name Meta (short for metaverse, the immersive virtual realm that Facebook’s been working on for years now) is simply a sign of that commitment. Even so, the appearance of trying to distract the public’s attention from Facebook’s troubles isn’t so easily dismissed. And that raises a question: Was announcing the new name at such a fraught time a good idea— and is it more likely to help Facebook or damage its reputation further? The timing is the thing The annals of branding are rife with examples of companies that have changed their names—many for reasons roughly analogous to the ones Zuckerberg gave last week. For example, when Weight Watchers concluded that the word “weight” was an impediment to its new direction of wellness, it became WW. A generation earlier, when Kentucky Fried Chicken realized the adjective “fried” carried unhealthy associations and stood in the way of the restaurant chain diversifying its menu, it became KFC. As logical as these decisions might be, consumers don’t easily forget that many name changes tend to come on the heels of various PR or literal disasters that a company wants to get away from in a hurry. It’s why, after flying 110 people into a Florida swamp in 1996, ValuJet became Air Tran. More recently, the baggage of racism—real or implied—prompted Uncle Ben’s to become just Ben’s and the Washington Redskins to be (for now) just the Washington Football Team. Brand consultant David J. Deal doesn’t think Facebook is changing its corporate name just because its core brand is having a bad patch. “Mark Zuckerberg has never allowed bad press to dictate the company's decisions,” he said. “If that were the case, Facebook would have changed its name a long time ago.” Nevertheless, Deal suggests that Facebook’s current trouble might well have “accelerated the timeline” on the Meta announcement. And now that it’s been made? Deal thinks it’s probably a good thing for the company. “Creating the Meta name completely changed the conversation about Facebook to the metaverse,” he said. “From a timing standpoint, this is perfect for Facebook.” Fix the old brand first But Adamson disagrees. Setting aside the merits of the Meta name—that it will broaden Facebook’s role in the evolving internet—the timing, to Adamson’s view, looks like an effort to distract. “Launching a new brand when your current brand is under siege is probably the worst time to do it,” he said. “Because everyone instantly goes to the story you're trying to move away from.” And there’s precedent for such a maneuver. In 2003, for example, cigarette giant Philip Morris decided to change its name to Altria—which was meant to evoke “altus,” meaning a high point. But the memory of the master tobacco settlement was still fresh in the public's mind and caused many observers to be suspicious. As former FDA commissioner David A. Kessler told The New York Times, “They are running away from tobacco.” Whether or not Facebook announcing a new brand name constitutes running away from its current woes, Adamson said, Zuckerberg and his well-compensated strategists would have done well to try to repair the reputation of their existing core brand before touting the name of a new one. “It’s always better to stick with your current brand and try to make it work,” Adamson said. And so long as the Facebook name evokes accusations of the company putting profits before the privacy and safety of its users, no new brand name is likely to compensate. “The Meta brand,” Adamson speculated, “will never escape the black hole gravity of Facebook. It will never be able to get out. It will never be able to rise above it.” Will Meta be the new Facebook? Insofar as last week’s announcement will likely position Facebook as the leading proponent of the emerging metaverse—and make itself synonymous with it the way Google is synonymous with search—Zuckerberg’s timing is shrewd, according to Wharton marketing professor Americus Reed. “He's trying to get out in front of this [technology] and psychologically own it before anybody,” Reed said. “It also comes with the benefit of changing the conversation,” he continued, speculating that Zuckerberg is evidently seeking to “create a new narrative, a new conversation that can take up all the oxygen so that it can distract from all the other stuff—Cambridge Analytica, misinformation, echo chambers of lies that might change elections, Instagram hurting young girls’ body image,” and so on. But Reed pointed out that the timing of the name change announcement—coming as it does in the bramble patch of scandal—only further calls into question the motivations of a company that isn’t exactly famed for its scruples. In other words, if Facebook started out as a fun and harmless social networking platform but eventually turned into a data-sucking leviathan with the power to rend the social fabric of entire countries, can consumers expect that the metaverse, under Facebook’s reigns, will turn out any better? “Facebook became this kind of perverse thing [of] misinformation. And it’s not clear to me why the exact same thing wouldn't happen in a metaverse context,” Reed said. “That's what scares me. You can have the proud boys [holding a rally] in some virtual riot space. And you’re crazy if you don’t think that’s going to happen.” Metaverse Marketing Podcast: Who Am I in the Metaverse?