Syfy: What's in a name

The SciFi channel announced today that they are rebranding the network of "Battlestar Galactica" and cheesy Saturday night B-movies to appear less nerdy. The new name: Syfy. Really, guys?! Is that the best you could come up with? That's not a brand, that's a typo. That's like renaming CNN to CNN and saying "We switched the Ns around." What's the point of it? Even worse, they spend a lot of time and money coming up with this new strategy.

From the New York Times:

"No discussion of change affecting consumers could ignore what Mr. Howe called the “Tropicana debacle” — the recent decision by a unit of PepsiCo to abandon a major package redesign for Tropicana orange juice after shoppers vociferously complained.

“The testing we’ve done has been incredibly positive,” Mr. Howe said of the Syfy name, reading what he described as a comment from one participant: “If I were texting, this is how I would spell it.”"

So that's what it's come to, naming brands based on how easy they are to text.