Maybe it's cool for customers or employees to call it The Shack in private (does anyone do that?), but once corporate makes it official, it automatically loses its cred. If Target started rerferring to itself with the fake french pronunciation, it would be funny for a second, but lame if they actually committed millions of dollars to it by hiring a team to make a campaign out of it with their power point pie charts and subway posters.
My other problem is that I just happen to like the name RadioShack and the nerdy homegrown tech-head connotation that surrounds it. Maybe the word is "old-fashioned" (like shopping in an actual store, no?) but to remove it is to blandize the image that built the business. RadioShack is a place for a geeks to drool on a thousand different audio adaptors. The Shack is for dirty water dogs, porno mags, and termites.
Anyways, I just put my feelings onto a floppy disk, stuck it in the Tandy, and it outputted this haiku onto the dot matrix:
Radio power
An invisible lightning
sets the Shack on fire
What would happen if everyone got into this nickname trend? If you wanted to meet me at The Barrel, would we be buying furniture with elitists or eating cheese with racists?
A few years back Mountain Dew tried to make us "Do the Dew." Would Sephora be able to make us "Do the Hora?"
Would the whippersnappers continue buying the freshest clothes at Aeropostale?
Technically, this should be Le Sac:
This makes no sense logically or economically, but I've always wanted to fist the Fuddrucker's sign:
And we're done here.-The Beast
Without a mention of the near coinciding, and completely not coincidental I'm sure, rebranding of numerous Pizza Hutts as 'The Hutt'?
ReplyDelete(ATTN: KEN - RE: FIRST PARAGRAPH)
ReplyDeleteWho reads and entire paragraph anymore?
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think they should have gone with RadShack, which was always the nerdy nickname for the subpar electronics chain.
ReplyDeleteIf they had done that it would have been like saying "We hear you electronics dorks, and thank you." But instead they shun us for mall girls needing a new cell phone or digital camera for their sexting.
Hmm. I can't really blame them there.
They aren't changing their name. The Shack is their new advertising campaign.
ReplyDelete(ATTN: ANON RE: "WILL BE REFERRING TO ITSELF AS...")
ReplyDeleteMork is right...good call. Radshack sounds way more awesome than The Shack.
ReplyDeleteRollie, this is one of your best posts! Hysterical! What I don't get is the fact that companies like Radio Shack and Pizza Hut have eons of name recognition under their belt which is priceless. Some companies would LOVE that kind of association but these companies are looking a gift horse in the mouth and shitting all over their prestigous names while opting for lamer names that won't stick. People will still say PIZZA HUT rather than THE HUT and it's easier to say Radio Shack than The Shack. That's just plain stupid. When will they learn? Don't mess with a good thing. I HOPE they never change White Castle to THE CASTLE becase that would be terrible.