Aviva mess rages
So I see the Norwich Union is changing its name to Aviva on the back of an advertising campaign which must have cost a fortune. Because nothing is more redolent of the new age of financial responsibility we find ourselves in than throwing cash at multimillionaires like Bruce Willis, Ringo Starr, and Elle Macpherson, don’t you find?
But what does it actually mean, Aviva? It’s like when Arthur Andersen became Accenture and when the Post Office was briefly Consignia before becoming Royal Mail. It’s nice shiny PR bullshit chosen precisely because it’s devoid of meaning. ‘One Aviva, twice the value‘ goes the new slogan, like a rhetorical rice cracker: you can chew on it all you like but you’re not going to get anything out of it.
Aviva. Sounds like Iranu or Uvavu to me. Or, more worryingly, Areva, the French energy conglomerate currently botching nuclear construction projects across the planet and helping to keep Niger at the bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index.
Still, you can’t blame Aviva for wanting something more glamorous in this modern, thrusting, misanthropic age. I mean Norwich, it’s so parochial, don’t you find? Not at all global. And Union. If there was ever a time when a company needed to shed connotations of being an organisation that might even think about helping the poor and vulnerable, it’s now.
Imagine the looks on the faces of the hedge funders and investors as Norwich Union representatives begged for their patronage at swanky cocktail parties. I bet some of them were even physically sick.
Update: I stand corrected. Guess what? Aviva does mean something.
The company name, Aviva, is a Hebrew name meaning Spring or Renewal (as in Tel Aviv). It is pronounced Ah-Vee-Vah.
No, I’m still none the wiser either. How that imagery fits with the ethos of a sodding bank is anybody’s guess.
Update updated: Ah. It’s not a bank is it? It’s an insurance company. Not that that’s any kind of step up, morally.
Posted on January 6th, 2009 at 7:39am under Miscellaneous misanthropy
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• 11 Comments |
I’m pretty sure the name change is just because they got taken over by Aviva a couple of years ago…
As an Aviva employee, I can tell you that Aviva is not a new company, they have not taken over Norwich Union. Aviva IS Norwich Union – just its overseas name – Norwich Union is being changed into the “Global Brand”.
And that the ad campaign cost 9 million pounds. Sucks when I know my payrise will be a pittance and loads of us are being made redundant.
I love the Ringo Starr bit in the TV ad. He asks whether he would he have been mobbed by teenage girls if his name had been Richard Starkey? Erm, well the answer to that is obviously yes! After all, the other members of the band, you know Paul, John and George, kept their original names didn’t they? And it didn’t do them any harm.
Years ago I swore I would never use Norwich Union for any insurance. Ever.
I can’t for the life of me remember why, now.
Time’s a great healer. Why do you think the Tories are ahead in the polls?
For that analogy to work, Sim-O would have needed to have signed up with another insurance company in the meantime, which doubled his premiums, refused to pay out any of his claims, stopped answering his calls, made statements in public about how much of a twat he was, and eventually sent out goons to set fire to his house.
To be fair on Accenture, they had to change the name because Arthur Andersen (the accountants) and Andersen Consulting (the go-getting management consultants) had an almighty falling out and a rather messy divorce, hence the forced name change for the latter. The former, of course, came a cropper a few years down the line thanks to Enron.
I opined re the nuclear warheads sell-off :
“there’s a small Cultural Studies paper waiting to be written on names – how the Amalgamated Union of Wire-Drawers, Fettlers and Allied Trades turns in thirty years into something called “Together” or “Unity”, British Insulated Cable and Radio Limited into “Xantippe” or “Xenith”, and the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment via “Defence Research Agency” into “QinetiQ”. The key being that the old, wordy, literate names actually described what the organisation did, the new ones conceal it and are post-literate, logos in letter form”
But has it got a vanishing-down-the-plughole logo?
I’m pissed off that I have an endowment with those buggers (I didn’t start it with them, mind you – it was originally with Commercial Union) that I’m guessing I’ll just have to keep paying into for the next dozen years if I ever want to see any return whatsoever.
It’s all about the customer choice, you know.
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