The Shack

[kpenguin]

Alright this is just ridiculous. (http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2009-08-05-ads-rebrand-radioshack_N.htm)

Does this actually work? Have you known anyone who's felt the urge to buy a certain brand after a "hip" rebranding?

[billtodamax]

Not even once. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leohcvmf8kM) Rebrandings just don't work on me.

[Trog]

Well it's just a knickname for the brand, basically, since they said the are not changing their logo or sign or what have you. I can see why they wouldn't change the actual name because RadioShack is a well-known store name whereas "The Shack" could sell bait for all I know if taken out of context. Since the business is electronics and not particularly radios I can see them wanting to distance themselves from the "Radio" bit a bit. Like Apple Computers dropping the "computers" part since that isn't all they do anymore.

My gut feeling is that this rebranding will not work in this case. Removing the Radio from RadioShack makes it very generic-sounding. I mean this sort of treatment can work at times. Like Kentucky Fried Chicken changing to KFC. But then I knew people that were calling it KFC long before the name change which is probably why, when they did change it, it stuck.

I don't think even RadioShack thinks this rebranding is "hip". :smalltongue:

Also I don't think the point of rebranding is to get someone to buy your product based on the name change but more to realign an aging brand which many not necessarily fit the current product/store/etc.

[Tirian]

It's hard to believe that they thought this one all the way through. Shacks are far more "twentieth century" than radios. We all still have radios, but shacks were driven out by the Shed Wars of the early 1960's. It's just for bait and meth labs now.

I think the most amusing part is how they this will now set up a big rivalry with The Hut (http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/pizza-hut-changes-its-name.aspx?GT1=33009). I get that Google and Amazon are really big, but that doesn't really imply that every company should throw away their brand recognition for a new name that doesn't describe what they do.

[Zeb The Troll]

It's hard to believe that they thought this one all the way through. Shacks are far more "twentieth century" than radios. We all still have radios, but shacks were driven out by the Shed Wars of the early 1960's. It's just for bait and meth labs now.

I think the most amusing part is how they this will now set up a big rivalry with The Hut (http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/pizza-hut-changes-its-name.aspx?GT1=33009). I get that Google and Amazon are really big, but that doesn't really imply that every company should throw away their brand recognition for a new name that doesn't describe what they do.Well, what would you have renamed it? Trog's point holds, that RADIO Shack doesn't fit what they do anymore either, and hasn't in a good many years. I see it as much the same as the KFC rebranding. They didn't so much choose a new name as choose a name they were already being called that might sorta close a pigeon hole they didn't want to plug anymore.

[Starscream]

All in favor of calling this site "The 'ground" from now on?

Hmmm. Might need some mispellings so that everyone knows how edgy we are. How about "Teh 'Grownd"? Home of everyone's favorite webcomic, "Teh Stique!"

[Tirian]

Well, what would you have renamed it? Trog's point holds, that RADIO Shack doesn't fit what they do anymore either, and hasn't in a good many years.

That's kind of my point. They haven't been primarily about the ham radio community for fifty or more years now. This is hardly the first slump they've been in during that time, and the fact that they don't sell radios didn't keep them from reorganizing all of the previous times. So, frankly, I wouldn't have renamed it.

If I were in charge of revitalizing Radio Shack I'd have gone with something like having online users create a shopping cart and then send their order to the nearest store for hold (or delivery if they want to be really supercharged). Or maybe I'd have thrown in the towel completely, since they are less convenient than Best Buy but much more expensive than mail-order amateur electronic suppliers and anything they do at this point is going to be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

But if I were somehow kidnapped and tortured and the conditions of my release were coming up with a new name for Radio Shack, I certainly wouldn't go down the reality-lessening path used by The Hut, SyFy, Mtn Dew, and others in some sort of desperate effort to seem hip by not having your name be grounded in what you do. Radio Shack's very essence is as a highly practical company, so they shouldn't be running off into the ether like that. I'd think about changing the name to Cellular Shack, which seems to reflect where their business has been for a while that will probably continue. Wireless Shack would be an interesting new-tech choice that would sort of ironically tie into the old-time radio image and also ironically fail to describe that they are a good place to buy wire.

But just dropping half of your name and adopting the definite article is quite a bit like a singer who chooses to be a one-word name. You look great if you're Sting or Madonna, but you look both silly and pretentious if you're not. I mean, let's accept the premise that the problem is that nobody feels cool saying the words "Radio Shack", but now you've set up this conversation:

A: I need batteries.
B: Let's go to The Shack!
A: The what?
B: You know, Radio Shack.
Both: ...

(Now A feels out of it because he didn't know what "The Shack" was and B feels out of it because he just said "Radio Shack". Lose/Lose.)

A: Let's go to Best Buy.
B: Cool.

[Zeb The Troll]

But just dropping half of your name and adopting the definite article is quite a bit like a singer who chooses to be a one-word name. You look great if you're Sting or Madonna, but you look both silly and pretentious if you're not. I mean, let's accept the premise that the problem is that nobody feels cool saying the words "Radio Shack", but now you've set up this conversation:

A: I need batteries.
B: Let's go to The Shack!
A: The what?
B: You know, Radio Shack.
Both: ...

(Now A feels out of it because he didn't know what "The Shack" was and B feels out of it because he just said "Radio Shack". Lose/Lose.)My point is that if I needed a roll of 10-gauge wire for a pet robot project (and not batteries that I can get at the grocery store) and I suggested "The Shack" to my buddies helping me with it, that would not in any way change the conversation today from what it would have been five years ago, or 25 years ago. I've been calling that place The Shack as long as I can remember, and so have my family and their friends. Why not make it official?

[GrandMasterMe]

All in favor of calling this site "The 'ground" from now on?

Hmmm. Might need some mispellings so that everyone knows how edgy we are. How about "Teh 'Grownd"? Home of everyone's favorite webcomic, "Teh Stique!"

Favored *sips coffee pretentiously*

[rubakhin]

I don't mind the Radio Shack thing since they don't cater mostly to radio people anymore, but I can't get over Mitten Dew.

[skywalker]

I personally associate the name "Radio Shack" with the '90s. Like, inexorably. Funnily enough, I'm the same way with "Pizza Hut."

So I can understand the idea and the need for re-branding, but at the same time I think they're both dumb as hell. Both seem like "trying-to-hard" attempts to reinsert the name into the popular conscious by making it somewhere hip that the kids want to go.

It can succeed tho. It's just exceedingly hard.

[Starscream]

I didn't mind when they changed KFC's name to, well, KFC. Because everyone already called it that.

But I don't think anyone was saying "I need a new cell phone. Time to go to the Shack." And I don't think they'll start saying that now, either. It'll always be Radio Shack to the public.

This is just the corporate equivalent of hitting forty and realizing that you need a Ferrari and a nineteen year old girlfriend all of a sudden.

[Coidzor]

Actually, the KFC rebranding was to avoid a lawsuit or having to pay the state of Kentucky royalties... :smallamused: Silly politicians thinking there'd be any loyalty for leverage for funds.

Also, thank you Mr. Love Shack Linkage. I'd never actually listened to the whole song before. haha. Just that one refrain, y'know the one.

*shrug* it'll satisfy the whole, "any news is good news" criteria at least, since if people are thinking/talking about radio shack then that will have some effect on them thinking of it when they actually have a need for the goods it peddles. Also, like, y'know, uh... crap.

um... Oh yeah, maybe some people'll think to check it out if they haven't been to one in awhile.

Mostly what would seem to me to be slim chances, but, eh. Depending upon how they did it, it's not like it's going to cost them a whole lot, and if they are spending money on it, well, advertising. *shrug*

Rubahkin: Actually, it's Mutton Dew, which is about as nasty as that sounds....

[Zeb The Troll]

I didn't mind when they changed KFC's name to, well, KFC. Because everyone already called it that.

But I don't think anyone was saying "I need a new cell phone. Time to go to the Shack." And I don't think they'll start saying that now, either. It'll always be Radio Shack to the public.I'm clearly in the minority here, I guess. Twice now I've commented that growing up, the people I talked to actually did always call it "the Shack" and never "Radio Shack" but the fact that the vast majority of people that I knew, growing up in central Colorado and central Oklahoma, did, implies that there at least is a part of the populace, "public" if you will, who already calls it that. Again I say, if you're looking for a name change, as with KFC, why not call it what others are already calling it? Maybe not "everyone" but enough to make it the second most common thing they're called that's legal to put up over the door.