A string of capital letters won’t change Facebook’s fortunes – it needs a real makeover

Facebook’s dominance of social media will not go on forever. It is more vulnerable than the US high tech giants

So Facebook becomes FACEBOOK. Rebranding is the classic response when a company has a reputational problem. It is not just that it hopes that customers will somehow think of it as different, but it hopes that the change will lift the moral of its employees too. No one likes working for a company whose reputation is being trashed.

Facebook has known that it was in trouble since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, with founder Mark Zuckerberg putting on a tie for his grilling in Congress, and hiring Sir Nick Clegg in an effort to improve its standing in Europe. It is easy to jeer at this and people will make up their own minds whether using capital letters really changes anything. But it makes a nice change from the current fashions to put everything in lower case or sprout random capitals in the middle of corporate names.

The big issue here, though, is not branding but substance. It is a classic rule of marketing that changing the packaging won’t help if you don’t also change the product inside. You don’t have to make huge changes to the product, but you have to improve it in some sort of way, so that the new package signals that it is somehow better – hence the strapline “new improved formula” applied to so many products ranging from lip balm, soldierless copper bonding and sports drinks, to rug control spray and car wax. (Google that phrase and you will see what I mean.)