Italo Suisse, a world-renowned chocolate company founded in 1923, changed its name to ‘ISIS’ at the end of 2013 since it was no longer associated with either Italy or Switzerland. But the next year, it suffered a great loss in revenue as well as goodwill because of the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). The terrorist group began to dominate international news headlines after videos of beheadings of UK and US nationals by them became viral.
The chocolate company, which branded all its pralines and tablets with the letters ‘ISIS’, realized that their sales had been reduced dramatically and that they had stopped receiving Christmas-time orders from the US and many countries in Europe – all because of an ill-timed change in name.
In a hasty corrective measure, the company changed its name to ‘Libeert’, hoping that their customers will return.
A similar decision is now faced by the honchos of the World Taekwondo Federation, as they are now planning to rebrand the organization, thanks to the WTF acronym becoming popular all over the world in a completely different and unwanted sense.
According to the Guardian, the federation’s secretary general, Hoss Rafaty said that the governing body would look to market itself as World Taekwondo for business and commercial purposes.
Taekwondo is a popular Korean form of martial arts and was a demonstration sport in the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. It was inducted into the Olympics for the first time in 2000 in Sydney.
The WTF was established in 1973 at its inaugural meeting with participation of 35 representatives from around the world, at a time when the internet was a distant reality. But with the slang becoming popular in the past few years, the federation has been forced to rethink its entire marketing strategy and branding policies.
While it may seem humourous at first, the change of name can certainly go a long way in helping the sport become more popular.
For example, a simple Google search for the acronym ‘WTF’ will take you in a completely opposite direction. With a change in name and initials, the governing body can get more hits from web searches and players will surely prefer walking around in t-shirts that do not say ‘WTF’ on their backs.
After the matter was discussed in a council meeting earlier this month, The World Taekwondo Grand Prix and the World Taekwondo World Championships have been appropriately renamed. Here’s hoping that the governing body’s new name will be much more unambiguous and will be one that will not make us go WTF!
