It's always a gamble to take the name of your product out of your brand name, making new customers wonder what they're getting. Apparently, RadioShack doesn't mind becoming simply The Shack. The communications retailer launched a rebranding campaign Aug. 6 with the slogan, "Our friends call us The Shack." It's not an official corporate name change, just a change in the way the company refers to itself. And it's not the first time the 90-year-old company has altered its alias. The company deleted the space to create the one-word RadioShack several years ago.
The company's press release insists customers and employees have already long referred to RadioShack by its new name, The Shack — a symbol of "when a brand becomes a friend," or perhaps becomes an isolated, Unabomber-friendly abode in the deep woods. The swap "is not about changing our name," the release goes on, but about "contemporizing the way we want people to think about our brand." Let's hope the company won't meet the same fate as its competitor, the now defunct Circuit City, which changed its name to "the City" in 2007. And that we won't have to soon be calling the band "the Head."