Still remember the Qwister setback for Netflix? The company finally made peace with its angry customers by announcing backing off the plan to spin off and rebrand its DVD rental business. If there’s anything we can learn from the irritation, it should be that don’t easily give up your existing brand name easily – unless it really sucks.
Apparently, not everyone learns from history. Qiyi, the online video subsidiary of Baidu announced today its brand upgrading plan to change its brand name and domain name to iqiyi(爱奇艺) and iqiyi.com separately, which seems to many is a lame move since there’s no point in doing so. Also Qiyi (or should I say iQiyi from now on) ‘upgraded’ its brand proposition to “Love Qiyi, Wtach Freely, Life in Displays(爱奇艺，自由看，屏生活)”.
The Beijing-based Hulu-like service just launched its new tagline last month, with a brand proposition of “Love Qiyi, Watch Freely”.
According to the company’s PR director, its latest brand proposition speaks to the technology trends of the ubiquitous of displays, be it in mobile phone, tablet or laptop. The new brand name and logo mirrored in the concept of Qiyi is aiming to be the leader in a displays-are-everywhere era.
The money-burning company is planning to do a national campaign to rave about its new brand name.
One thing needs clarification is that, the company didn’t add an extra letter ‘i’ to pay tribute to Apple though. Qiyi PR director explained a little bit that ‘i’ sounds like ‘ai’ which can be interpreted as ‘love’ in Chinese. So it represents the company loves and cares for its customers. Well, if you do care for them, just give them a shorter domain name.