Ashley Madison & Brand Management

“Life is short. Have an affair” (a registered Trade Mark) was the famous slogan of Ashley Madison, a Canadian company launched as a mobile app in 2001.  This was a dating application established to aid extra-marital affairs, netting the owner Noel Biderman $55 million per year.  It was not until July 2015 that it became infamous…

When the website was not closed due to hacker pressure, hackers released Ashley Madison’s client names onto the dark web. This caused the fallout of blackmail, divorces, public outings and the suicide of a US pastor.   This resultant negativity is behind the new rebrand to remove Ashley Maidon’s parent company, Avid Life Media, from the negative news reporting on a global basis.

Avid Life Media is now commencing a wide-spread rebranding replacing Ashley Madison with Ruby and changing their slogan to “Find your moment”.

However, by going too simple and simply changing the branding to Ruby, Avid life media may encounter a similar issue akin to Blackwater USA. Blackwater USA failed in their attempt to rebrand to Xe after its employees were accused of killing 34 Iraqi insurgents.   The new brand Xe was deemed too simple a name change and the previous name continued to be referred to, this resulted in another rebrand from Xe to Academi. However, this name change appeared to work. Academi was deemed boring and therefore the negative news coverage ceased.  The second name change was successful and necessary for the company to distinguish itself from the previous events.

However, it is not until you rebrand your company that you will you know whether or not the rebrand is a success, and whether this correlates into increased customers and profits.

Briffa comment:

Once you have successfully established your brand, ensure you do everything within your budgetary power to protect it.   Effective data protection is key as well as managing how your company is represented in the media.  If the “brand” is irreparable, then an effective rebrand is key.

Briffa will be able to advise you on all aspects of the rebrand process. Briffa advises on all aspects of Intellectual Property litigation and all other aspects of intellectual property law