'A good name is better than precious ointment," according to the Bible. These days, that can mean more than just a good reputation, especially in business. It can mean a snappy title, too: something that will both stick in people's minds and make them smile.
When the bigwigs at PricewaterhouseCoopers' consulting arm sat down with branding advisers recently to think of a "good name" ahead of their separation from the giant accounting firm, they probably had both things in mind. On the one hand, in the wake of the Enron scandal it couldn't hurt their reputation to delink themselves verbally from their parent accounting body. PricewaterhouseCoopers had nothing to do with Enron -- that was Arthur Andersen -- but accountants in general have been under a cloud ever since. Why carry the freight if you aren't even in the accounting business?
On the other hand, they needed a new name anyway. PwC Consulting, as they are known now, just doesn't cut it in this age of zippy one-word monikers. Pharmaceutical makers Hoechst and Rhone-Poulenc merged three years ago to form Aventis. Scottish Telecom has for some reason become Thus (our favorite). Even Arthur Andersen's consulting arm presciently took on a new identity in 2000 as Accenture (they are still being confused with a fashion house, but that's better than being confused with Arthur Andersen). It is clear which way the trend is going, and PwC wasn't on board. At the very least, it needed to sort out its ideas about upper-case and lower-case letters before gearing up for a planned $1 billion public offering this summer.