Will our new name fit on our letterhead?

PricewaterhouseCoopers is a pretty big firm. In fact it’s the biggest of the Big 4 audit firms in the world (or it was the last time I looked). And it also has one of the least creative names in that sector or, in fact, any sector... and the longest.

It was formed in 1998 by the merger of two large firms, Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand. Both firms have a long history dating back to the nineteenth century. So did it get just too hard back in 1998 to think of a brand new name? ... or a new brand name? Was it a bad year for creativity? Were the naming firms on holiday? Were both firms so precious about their names and heritage that they just wouldn’t give them up no matter what?

It turns out that in 1989 Price Waterhouse and Arthur Andersen had discussed a merger to explore economies of scale. So we may have ended up with PricewaterhouseArthur or even PricewaterhouseAndersen. Luckily Price Waterhouse didn’t merge and avoided getting tainted by the Enron disaster.

But wait there’s more. Coopers & Lybrand was the result of a merger in 1957 between Cooper Brothers & Co; Lybrand, Ross Bros & Montgomery and a Canadian firm McDonald, Currie and Co.

Hey it could have been RossbrosmontgomerymcdonaldCurrieCo! How would that have looked on the letterhead? Pity the poor receptionist... “Good morning this RossbrosmontgomerymcdonaldCurrieCo, can I help you?

I guess it would have been a disaster if it had an office in a certain small village in north west Wales... “Ello boyo this is RossbrosmontgomerymcdonaldCurrieCo’s Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch office... can I ’elp you?

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney and London with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, Singapore and Mumbai.