Sometimes even 'bad press' is bad and these 10 tech rebrands prove it

We love to hear about innovations in consumer technology that will "change the world." Often, the word "disruptive" is used to describe such innovations. But what happens when the disruption isn't to the world's status quo but to those attempting to disrupt it? You get gaffs like Airbnb's logo rebranding in 2014. Its Bélo symbol was involved in multiple controversies. Sometimes, a rebrand isn't as apparent as a new logo. Instead, it's a change in direction, like when Apple launched FCPX and alienated much of its professional audience.
Recently, Microsoft rebranded Bing Chat, making it Microsoft Copilot, and experienced a failure. That got us thinking about other hilarious historical fails. Let's take a trip down nightmare memory lane to revisit the ten worst tech rebrands of all time.
Netflix started an online DVD rental service. When streaming was introduced in 2007, it was part of the fee you paid for DVD rentals. However, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings saw the future of online video consumption and had a plan. Hastings announced in July 2011 that Netflix would separate the two services. What was once $10 for DVD rentals and unlimited streaming would now be $7.99 for DVD rentals or streaming and $15.98 if you wanted both.
Two months after the announcement, Netflix stock lost half its value. Hastings announced a new DVD rental service in September 2011 called Qwikster. Users needed to sign up for a new, separate account, but consumers weren't having it. So, Hastings and company shuttered that service one month later. "Fail fast," indeed.
A new kid on the block tried to corner the mobile payment market in 2013. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile backed the mobile wallet app, Isis. The app was intended to be its own payment vendor instead of a place to hold your credit and debit cards. But the timing for that name was horrible. The terrorist organization, Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, aka ISIS, made global headlines, making it challenging for those searching the internet for information about the mobile wallet Isis.
Isis was rebranded to Softcard to make it search-friendly and to distance the brand from the terrorist organization. Isis Mobile Wallet/Softcard never took off. Still, you may be using remnants of its IP today because Google bought portions of Softcard and relaunched Google Wallet as Android Pay.
An enterprising tech journalist, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, regaled the world in 2008 with his vision of the casual computing future: the CrunchPad. Originally slated to retail for $200, the Singapore development studio Fusion Garage brought the tablet to market without Michael Arrington at the helm as the JooJoo.
The JooJoo launched for $500 days before the iPad. "JooJoo" is the phonetic pronunciation of "juju," derived from the West African word for "luck." Launching before the iPad was bad luck because the iPad was a better device in terms of hardware and its app store ecosystem, which ensured the name rebrand wasn't the only reason the JooJoo would fail.
Oxford University Press began printing in 1669 and is one of the most lauded producers of dictionaries. It published its first dictionary in 1884. But what happens when a brand with a centuries-long pedigree wants to bring its look into the 21st century?
Like "The Shack," Oxford's modernizing wasn't for the better. Oxford University Press replaced its classic blue logo in 2014 with a modernized logo that it hoped would help it stand out and beat the competition. It did when it introduced its new Beats Words By Dre logo for Oxford Dictionaries. It looks familiar, right? When it brainstormed this, it didn't forget about Dre.
I'm a fan of the artist enclave, DeviantArt. It's easy to get lost in the rabbit hole of genres of fan art, photography, literature, and more, but the logo you see today wasn't around before 2014.
That year, it hired global independent design studio Moving Brands to help it move into the future as DeviantArt, presenting a new site layout to its users, called "deviants," and introduced a mobile app. With all of that came a logo redesign. It changed from its "DA" initials logo (top) to one with slices (bottom), and it was definitely "artistic." I'm still trying to determine if the green element is a step stool or a martial arts weapon called a "Tonfa."
Microsoft 365 Office is the most widely used productivity suite in the corporate world. Its user base grew by 200 million in 2019, so there are many eyes on the company's brand. That means small things can become a big deal. Such is the case with the now viral name change and logo redesign for Microsoft 365 Office, now Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Copilot is Microsoft's foray into artificial intelligence, and since AI is the future, I'm not mad about the name change. The hot takes came fast and furious when everyone saw the new logo, which had the M365 tag strewn across it so small it was almost illegible.
Microsoft is all-in on its AI initiative, raising the subscription price for the first time in 13 years and integrating Copilot into the base plan instead of charging extra for a Copilot Pro subscription. Maybe it should've paid a bit extra to have that logo redesigned.
Tech and science fiction go hand-in-hand. Star Trek communicators are now smartphones. "The Demolition Man" featured driverless cars, and now Waymo's on the road. Some movies seem to have a prescience about what's to come, and the folks in marketing at what was once known as the Sci-Fi channel wish they could've tapped into that quality before rebranding to SyFy.
In Poland and other countries around the world, "Syfy" is synonymous with the STI syphilis. That's probably not what you want consumers to associate with your brand, but it wasn't enough to make SyFy rethink its redesign. The name remains today, and it is still ridiculed. I guess there's truly no such thing as "bad press."
Radio Shack's move in 2008 to rebrand to "The Shack" to survive the recession in the United States didn't work out well. It tried to remain relevant and appeal to younger consumers but alienated its long-time DIY customers. The odd thing was that it never fully committed to the rebrand. The marketing referred to the company as "The Shack," while the logo had both names, "RadioShack The Shack," making it confusing.
When a stoic Morpheus speaks those words to Neo, it references another virtual world, the fictional "Matrix." The issue in is the same: How do you communicate the virtual world's value without showing someone what it is? Even then, how easy is it for the average user to conceptualize what exactly Mark and the Facebook fam are trying to do as they drive folks to the Metaverse?
The most concerning issue with the rebrand is that while the age demographic with the most users in the US is between 25 and 34, users who spend the most time on Facebook are between 55 and 64. How well are they receiving the new branding and the aspirational ideals put forth by Mark Zuckerberg? Is "Meta" too meta for Meemaw and PawPaw?
Picture this: Twitter was so widely used that it became the "go-to" platform for those fighting oppression internationally during social upheaval and protest. Traditional media organizations quote its content multiple times daily in broadcast news reports and more.
Now picture this: Elon Musk buys the platform and runs into trust issues with that audience, so much so that many advertisers drop Twitter. Some major brands with an active presence also shut down their Twitter accounts. According to analysts, 32 million users left after Musk's $44 billion purchase.
Amidst all that, and despite Twitter's powerful name recognition, Musk changed the branding. Elon Musk's rebranding of the Twitter platform to "X" is the worst tech rebrand in modern times. Almost 18 months after the announcement, nearly everyone still refers to his platform as "X (formerly Twitter)." Not to mention, sending someone an "x" sounds weird: "Hey! I'll X you that info in a bit."
Writing an article like this is tough because many involved in these decisions take huge risks, and I applaud that. It's easy to get stuck in the paralysis of analysis, and it's also challenging to catch lightning in a bottle and come up with a rebrand that resonates with consumers and makes tech cool again. Let these ten examples be cautionary and educational, showing you what not to do the next time you're thinking of changing things up.

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