Author: margolies,marc
Date: 11:15:39 12/22/03
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Thanks for the clear explanation, Mike. I had always thought they renamed as Exxon becuase they were exon-erated from anti-trust litigation after they purchased the whole US Justice Dept. during the Reagan admnistration. On December 22, 2003 at 10:32:52, Mike Byrne wrote: >On December 22, 2003 at 01:07:03, margolies,marc wrote: > >>the former 'standard oil of new jersey' (now called Exxon-Mobil)is still called >>Esso (pronouned S.O.) in Italy and in Canada (national subsidiaries), at least >>it was the last time I pumped my gas in those two places. I never heard this >>Japanese story before; could you cite a reference, please? >>How many american gas stations are there in Japan? >> > > >Esso was derived from S.O. as in "S.O. of N.J." (Standard Oil of New Jersey). >The Esso to Exxon name change happened in the mid 70's at the top parent level. >Later they merged with Mobil. Exxon Mobil Corporation is the parent of Esso, >Mobil and ExxonMobil companies. > > >" >Another interesting situation is when a company anxiously spends considerable >time and money to ensure that not only are their products appropriately named >for each of the foreign markets they compete in, but that the company name >itself is free of negative implications in any marketplace. Perhaps the most >well known example of this is the series of name changes that Standard Oil have >gone through in their decades of business. After concluding that Standard Oil >sounded too much like a U.S. company, they changed the corporate name to "Esso." >Esso, however, has some significant negative connotations in the Japanese >market: it translates phonetically to "stalled car." > >Using modern technology, Esso spent great amounts of money studying the language >and slang of dozens of languages, enabling them to feed the data into a computer >which then generated inoffensive non-word names suitable for an international >corporation. This list of words was then given to numerous linguists who >ascertained that "Exxon" was the best of the choices. Ironically, Exxon is >similar to an obscure obscenity in Aluet Eskimo. > >Richard Carr of the Carr Group notes that for all the effort spent by Exxon to >devise a pristine name, they then changed their advertising slogan from "the >sign of happy motoring" to "the sign of the double cross." The company has again >revised their slogan, however, since 'double cross' has significant negative >connotations in English. >" > > >http://www.intuitive.com/globalsoftware/gs-chap5.html
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