In the beginning, cola was as dark as the night. But then one day, C.L Grigg felt that there was more to lemons that lemonade. He created the aerated drink that would soon become the pioneer of the ‘Uncola campaign’. Bib-Lable Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda was launched in the year 1929 and was lapped up by the public almost immediately. That’s when Grigg decided to shorten the name to something easier. There, was born the drink we all love to call 7 Up.
Hungry? Grab a Marathon. That doesn’t sound quite right, does it? Probably the reason that the makers changed the name of the peanut filled candy bar to ‘Snickers’. Sure it would make sense to have one and run a marathon, but we think the name change was definitely a good move!
What’s in a name you ask? A lot! Especially if you happen to be a major consulting firm in the middle of a legal separation. After the split between Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting, was born what we know today as Accenture.
It's true. If one of the forerunners of the internet world had not changed its name it would sound like a children’s novel? Back when Jerry Yang and David Filo started playing around with the world wide web, they called it ‘Jerry’s guide to the world wide web’. Well thank god that didn’t last for long and we got the easier and shorter Yahoo!
One of those names that is almost synonymous to the task of photo copying itself, Xerox was once named ‘The Haloid Company’. Could you ever imagine saying ‘Oh I’m just going to Haloid company this’?!
Back when Caleb Bradford was experimenting with sugar and carbonated water he called it- ‘Brad’s drink’. He decided to change it to something more descriptive and named it ‘Pepsi- Cola’ indicative of the fact that initially it was to be marketed as a potential digestive aid ,much like the naturally-occurring enzyme pepsin breaks down food.
We saved the best for the last.
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin started collaborating on creating a search engine, they called it ‘BackRub’. It would soon evolve into something bigger and better than anything we could ever imagine- and thankfully, it wouldn’t be called that either. They eventually changed the name to ‘Google’.
If there are any such stories that you know of, do share them with us in comments and we’ll feature them in our next post!
