Marketing the same product under a different identity. For example, the owner of a restaurant decides to change the name from “Jake's Place" to “The Inn on the Lake" in order to signify a more upscale eating establishment.
Case Study In one of the most expensive and, to many, confusing rebrandings in history, AT&T announced in early 2007 that Cingular Wireless would become AT&T. The name change came about after AT&T acquired BellSouth Corporation at the end of 2006. The two companies jointly owned Cingular Wireless, which in 2004 had acquired AT&T Wireless after it was spun off from parent AT&T. But this had been a different AT&T that divested the wireless operation. The earlier AT&T was purchased in 2005 by SBC, one of its former operating companies that immediately assumed the better-known name of its former parent. Confusing? Think of former AT&T Wireless subscribers who became Cingular Wireless subscribers before becoming AT&T subscribers. Some AT&T subscribers had never made the first change and were continuing to use AT&T Wireless phones when Cingular announced the change to AT&T. The Cingular brand name had been born only six years before the latest rebranding. After spending billions of dollars promoting the Cingular name, AT&T officials refused to provide an estimate on the cost of the latest rebranding.