The information of the loss of the WH Smith name from British high roads after 233 years has swiftly been replaced by a concern: that, or possibly what, is its substitute TGJones?
Included in the statement from the brand-new proprietor, Modella Capital, which has actually gotten the 480-store high road chain for simply ₤ 76m, is the information that after a “short transitional period” site visitors to its stores will certainly be welcomed with the make believe “family” brand.
WH Smith obtained its name from William Henry Smith, its owners’ youngest child, and the chain’s brand-new proprietors have actually stated that the totally brand-new name TGJones “feels like a worthy successor”
“Jones carries the same sense of family and reflects these stores being at the heart of everyone’s high street,” spurted an agent. “It’s obviously based on another familiar surname – Smith, Jones.”
However, branding professionals really feel distinctly in different ways, and anticipate that TGJones will certainly sign up with the rankings of unfortunate rebrands such as New Coke, Royal Mail’s millennial transformation to Consignia and the fund supervisor Aberdeen’s influencer-inspired vowel-dropping adjustment to Abrdn.
“This is like Trumpian chaos theory,” claims Mark Borkowski, branding and online reputation specialist. “You want to be talked about, to create massive debate, but what will it evaporate down to? Probably not what the new owners want it to. It sounds like an accountancy practice. This is laughably see-through and we are already talking about it as a desperate pivot.”
Modella has actually explained that the brand name is “not a reference to any individual”, a factor heeded by followers of Thomas George “TG” Jones, the “prince of centre halves” that bet Everton and Wales in the 1930s and 1940s and passed away in 2004.
Jones’s Wikipedia page has actually been swiftly upgraded to mirror that he is not connected with either WH Smith or TGJones, although in later life he did wind up running a newsagent in North Wales.
And normally, the dispute regarding Smith and Jones raises memories of Alas Smith and Jones, the BBC funny collection of the 1980s and 1990s starring Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones.
To additionally strengthen that the brand-new name is a branding-lite replica of WH Smith, an interior e-mail to team has actually stated that Modella has “chosen to keep the blue and white brand colours which you will all be familiar with”, for “a sense of reassuring continuity”.
“It feels incredibly close, a poor mirror of WH Smith and not necessarily very well thought through,” claims Charlotte Black, the principal approach policeman atSaffron Brand Consultants “I would say it feels hasty – an ‘insert here’ strategy – and a bit of a missed opportunity. Buying the high street stores could have been a blank sheet of paper to put a lot of meaning behind what the future offering might be for the public.”
WH Smith is the most recent in a string of once-ubiquitous names to vanish from high roads, consisting of Debenhams, Topshop, Woolworths and Littlewoods, and rebrandings have a distinctly irregular background of exercising.
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In 2019, John and Irene Hays purchased Thomas Cook’s 555 UK stores in an offer that saw the 178-year old brand vanish– in a rebrand to Hays Travel– an action that appears to still be exercising simply great for the brand-new proprietors. In the 1980s, River Island’s button from Chelsea Girl and Kendall’s to Next likewise showed effective.
While the very first public getaway of the TGJones name has actually been an unpromising beginning for WH Smith’s brand-new proprietors, the substitute of such an age-old home was constantly most likely to have actually come in for objection.
“When it comes down to putting out a new name, especially dealing with such an iconic legacy brand, there is always going to be a lot of negative sentiment,” claimsBlack “By just changing the name in the way they have, they now really need to come swiftly to what their new value proposition is going to be.
“They could have used the new name as a way to ignite change. So now what is important is what they do next to put meaning behind TGJones.”
