By David Vise
Friday, October 17, 2003
AOL Time Warner Inc. deleted the "AOL" from its name yesterday, returning to the familiar "Time Warner" label that was its corporate calling card before its ill-fated $112 billion merger with America Online in January 2001.
At America Online's Dulles headquarters, many employees first noticed the change yesterday when they tried checking on the corporation's stock price from their computers, a popular practice that developed during the heyday of the Internet juggernaut's rise. When they punched in the letters "AOL" to get a stock quote, an electronic message informed them that the stock-ticker symbol had been changed to "TWX," the abbreviation Time Warner used on Wall Street before the merger.
While the "AOL Time Warner" sign continued to hang on the company's Manhattan headquarters yesterday, the company rolled out a new corporate logo designed by Lippincott Mercer, a New York-based consulting firm.
Company officials said the corporate name change would cost about $500,000, including the cost of a new sign on its headquarters.
The name change was approved this fall by the corporation's board of directors after months of lobbying by Time Warner officials angry over the steep drop in the value of their stock holdings. In August, America Online chief executive Jonathan F. Miller asked for the change, citing his desire to eliminate confusion created by the overlap between the AOL Time Warner corporate name and the "AOL" shorthand by which the Internet brand is popularly identified.
"The AOL Time Warner name created confusion for our brands and also for America Online," Time Warner Senior Vice President Edward Adler said yesterday. "Time Warner, at the end of the day, is not a brand name. It is a corporate name. And our brands, HBO or AOL or CNN or People magazine or Time magazine, all have very distinct images in the world, and you don't want your corporate name to overshadow that."
Miller, in California yesterday to announce a marketing partnership between Apple Computer's iTunes online music store and AOL, said in a telephone interview that the name change would better delineate what improvements in online music and other content the Internet service is offering its roughly 25 million subscribers.
"We are rebuilding the brand in the consumer's mind, and everything we have seen indicates we are making headway in that regard," Miller said. "Our brand stands for one thing only: an absolutely fantastic online service."
Miller sent an e-mail to America Online employees yesterday that made no mention of the name change and focused entirely on the partnership with Apple. In contrast, with no major corporate news to report, Time Warner Chairman Richard D. Parsons took note of the name and stock-ticker change in a separate e-mail to corporate employees yesterday.
"Today marks the first day our company will be operating under its new name, Time Warner Inc.," Parsons wrote. "We believe the Time Warner name more accurately represents the portfolio of our valuable businesses, all of which are making important contributions to the overall company."
Parsons said further instructions would follow on new stationery and other items. He also noted that the address of the company's Web site had been changed to www.timewarner.com.
AOL subscribers using dial-up connections -- the majority of the company's customers -- continued to see the old "AOL Time Warner" corporate name on the Web site yesterday, while computer users with high-speed Internet connections saw the new name. America Online has been losing subscribers to faster and cheaper Internet services.
Time Warner stock gained 23 cents yesterday, closing at $15.92.
Adler said that while the return to the "TWX" stock-ticker symbol sparked little debate or discussion, company executives invested both time and money in considering the look and feel of the new corporate logo. He said Parsons ultimately approved a fresh look in which the words "Time" and "Warner" have no space between them.
The advantage of the tighter-looking logo, Adler said, is that it facilitates inclusion of the corporate logo beneath the name of individual brands in advertising and promotion, as well as motion pictures from Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema.
"We looked at going back to "Time Warner," something more radical, and something more evolutionary, and this is more evolutionary," Adler said. "The new logo signals this is not the same company it was as the old Time Warner. We wanted it to be forward looking without coming up with some logo that had symbols or fireworks shooting out of it."
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