Top 10 Worst Corporate Rebrands

Mark Zuckerberg renamed the company Meta to escape bad press and bet on the metaverse, spending $36 billion on a virtual reality world almost nobody uses while the word "meta" became synonymous with corporate delusion.

Gap replaced its iconic navy blue box logo with a bland Helvetica wordmark and gradient square, sparking such immediate internet outrage that the company reverted to the original within six days.

PepsiCo paid Arnell Group $35 million to redesign Tropicana's packaging, removing the iconic orange-with-a-straw image, which caused a 20% sales drop and a $50 million loss before they reverted in two months.

The struggling electronics retailer tried to seem hip by rebranding as "The Shack" in 2009, a nickname that made the company sound like a dilapidated building rather than a tech destination, accelerating its decline into bankruptcy.

Renamed to "WW" in 2018 with the confusing tagline "Wellness that Works," abandoning decades of brand recognition in weight loss to chase the wellness trend, leaving customers and investors bewildered.

When Kraft split in 2012, the snacking division chose the made-up name Mondelez International, a word so awkward that CEO Irene Rosenfeld had to issue pronunciation guides and which sounds like a pharmaceutical in most languages.

PwC paid $110 million to BrandEra to rename its consulting arm "Monday," a word universally associated with misery, before IBM acquired the division and mercifully killed the name.

NBC Universal respelled the SciFi Channel as "Syfy" in 2009 to be more trademarkable, not realizing that "syfy" is slang for syphilis in several languages and alienating its core science fiction audience.

Dropped "Donuts" from its name in 2019 to emphasize beverages, confusing a customer base that comes specifically for donuts and diluting the playful alliterative brand name that had worked for nearly 70 years.

Mark Zuckerberg renamed the company Meta to escape bad press and bet on the metaverse, spending $36 billion on a virtual reality world almost nobody uses while the word "meta" became synonymous with corporate delusion.

Gap replaced its iconic navy blue box logo with a bland Helvetica wordmark and gradient square, sparking such immediate internet outrage that the company reverted to the original within six days.

PepsiCo paid Arnell Group $35 million to redesign Tropicana's packaging, removing the iconic orange-with-a-straw image, which caused a 20% sales drop and a $50 million loss before they reverted in two months.

The struggling electronics retailer tried to seem hip by rebranding as "The Shack" in 2009, a nickname that made the company sound like a dilapidated building rather than a tech destination, accelerating its decline into bankruptcy.

Renamed to "WW" in 2018 with the confusing tagline "Wellness that Works," abandoning decades of brand recognition in weight loss to chase the wellness trend, leaving customers and investors bewildered.

When Kraft split in 2012, the snacking division chose the made-up name Mondelez International, a word so awkward that CEO Irene Rosenfeld had to issue pronunciation guides and which sounds like a pharmaceutical in most languages.

PwC paid $110 million to BrandEra to rename its consulting arm "Monday," a word universally associated with misery, before IBM acquired the division and mercifully killed the name.

NBC Universal respelled the SciFi Channel as "Syfy" in 2009 to be more trademarkable, not realizing that "syfy" is slang for syphilis in several languages and alienating its core science fiction audience.

Dropped "Donuts" from its name in 2019 to emphasize beverages, confusing a customer base that comes specifically for donuts and diluting the playful alliterative brand name that had worked for nearly 70 years.