Solution To Bad Publicity: Name Change

               

           
                    

The BBC is running a report about a London gardener who was awarded  £550,000 for disability discrimination. The company that he worked for at the time was called Lambeth Service Team. That's not its name today. The BBC doesn't share that bit of news until the very last line of the story.

That is the story. No offense to the discriminated worker. I'm thrilled he was compensated for the discrimination. But the larger story is that a company  that has been vilified in the press ( assumption) can now go out and work under a different name.

People can't do that. Why is it that businesses can change their name to disassociate themselves with bad publicity but if a human being tried to do that, it would be illegal?

 

UK DEED POLLS asked people in Great Britain why they change their names. The reasons were standard, marriage divorce,  or they didn't like their name. At the end of the poll the company offered up this:

So long     as you are not changing your name for fraudulent purposes, it doesn't matter     what the reason is - it's your right to be known by whatever name you wish    

Do you consider it fraudulent for a business to change its name so people won't associate the company with bad publicity?

Lambeth Sevice Team is not the first to do it. Just a couple of weeks ago, Mutts and Moms changed the name of their website because of all the publicity from the Ellen DeGeneres fiasco. And Diebold, the company that brings us those sometimes suspect voting machines has given that division a new name to create some "distance."

From the Wired Blog Network:

After five years in the voting machine business, the company currently has more than 25,000 optical scan units and more than 126,000 touch-screen voting machines in use around the country. But it's long been viewed by analysts that the election division's repeated bad publicity was bringing the whole company down. Indeed, negative publicity about the division has led to dips in the company's stock price, and the announcement today comes after analysts downgraded the Diebold stock earlier this week from "buy" to "hold."

The machines are now branded: PESI-- thats Premier Election Solutions Inc. Oh, in case you are in London and need a gardening service be sure to do your homework on Environment Services Lambeth.