FedEx announced yesterday that they would be renaming Kinko’s “FedEx Office”
“The name FedEx Office more accurately represents our broader role of providing superior information and services,” Brian Philips, the unit’s chief executive officer, said in the statement. “We are a back office for small businesses and a branch office for medium to large businesses and mobile professionals.”
FedEx to rename Kinko’s [Bloomberg via Kottke]
(Photo: cmorran123 )
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I wonder if they’ll keep the craptacular service that they’re known for.
I predict this will be a marketing disaster. The Kinko’s brand is really strong. Whether you have good or bad feelings about the stores, you know what it stands for.
The first Kinko’s cart (they started out with only a cart) is down the street from me. It was founded by 2 UCSB graduates. This makes me kinda sad…
…but everyone knows what kinkos is. Thats a well known word. Idiots.
Seems like a bad idea. Kinko’s has better brand recognition…
Awww. Another college memory dies. Long live 24-hour, save your ass Kinkos! Seriously, before everyone had access to a zillion computers and printers, Kinkos helped many an all-nighter paper toward a (reasonably) happy ending.
This is dumb. The Kinko’s brand name had the lock on “do-it-all integration”. The FedEx brand equates to shipping. I think this is a bad branding decision.
@sprocket79: Agreed. If I drove by a “FedEx Office,” I don’t think I would ever associate it with copying, printing, etc. I would think it was just a place to ship packages from.
time marches on…in the near future, one company will own everything in the usa…..
“I like Kinko’s, because they’re open 24 hours. If it’s 5 am and I decide I need two of something, I’m covered! Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, and then I think, “Oh, yeah. Kinko’s. No problem. That will not remain singular.”
Oh no-berries. This bring us one step closer to it being called Wal-Mart.
@HOP: Compu-Global-Hyper-Meganet
I agree with others in that if I were looking for a place to make some copies or print some photos or something, and I passed “FedEx Office,” I would not be inclined to go there. On the other hand, I don’t consider myself a small, medium, or large business, nor a “mobile professional”; I’m just a person who sometimes needs to copy or print stuff. So apparently they’re not interested in my business, anyway.
Hey guys, the thing is some exec had been sitting at a meeting thinking that they needed to say somethiing becuase ya know, they’re making $X,XXX,XXX a year, this is the best he/she could come up with and because all the other overpaid execs couldnt think of anything better to talk about they all aggreed that it was a great idea.
I belive I just stole a Bill Simmons theory.
Be real, who didn’t see this renaming on the horizon after Federal Express took over Kinkos?
How many brands under the happy FedEx roof? We have FedEx Express (known internally as “FedEx Classic”), FedEx Ground (a.k.a. FedEx NewCoke), “FedEx Custom Critical”, “FedEx Home Delivery” (apparently a different thing from FedEx NewCoke), now introducing “FedEx Office” and coming soon, “FedEx Burgers” and “FedEx Taco Trucks”.
May go down as the worst “re-brand” in history. When Mail Boxes Ect. got bought by UPS, it still made sense, and FedEx Kinko’s makes sense, FedEx office sounds like a discount bin office software you have to un-install the second you buy a new computer along with all the other blotware out there.
I figure 6 months before they announce mass closing of FedEx Offices stores.
It realy should have been “Kinkos – FedEx” from the start. Kinkos as a brand represents a location. Where do you go to get copies? You go to Kinkos.
FedEx is a service company. You don’t “go” to FedEx, they come to you.
Or, you go to Kinkos to FedEx something.
They have screwed everything up.
@mgy:
Best qoute ever.
This is clearly the product of white-line marketing execs. It’s amazing they’d tank such a well-regarded and entrenched brand.
Wait, did Harvard Business School ever have a Kinkos? That could explain the complete detachment from reality.
In a similar move, Pop-Copy to be renamed “Copy Your Own Shit”
When will the Fedex Office Service Pack 1 be out?
‘cos I’m not installing it until then.
Something in the article that didn’t make it into the Consumerist post: the company says it will cost $696 million to make this incredibly stupid change. Nearly 700 million dollars to change their name to something worse. Can you imagine what could be done in the world with 700 million dollars? Would it be possible to spend 700 million dollars in a way likely to result in less net benefit to anyone than this name change?
@Propaniac: Apparently FedEx is doing it’s own economic stimulus package to the sign making industry, and screwing FedEx shareholders in the process…
This is stupid. When I was in college I didn’t even have a kinko’s in town but referred to any copy place as Kinko’s just because of the brand name.
FedEx office just doesn’t sound like a place that I would want to take my school projects to.
Gotta go with the wisdom of the crowd here. “Kinko’s” was about the most recognizable brand name in photocopying and other office-type stuff.
Its association with its product/service was as strong as, if not stronger than, Xerox with copiers or Kleenex with facial tissues. You thought, “I need to fax something but I don’t have a fax machine. Where’s the nearest Kinko’s?”, not “Where is the nearest office support service store?”
This is akin to Wal-Mart snapping In-N-Out Burger, then renaming it Wal-Grill. Maybe.
Popcopy comes to mind…
@JDAC: @JDAC: “Copy Your Own Shit” – I just busted out laughing!
Maybe they’ll end up having to pull an ATT-Cingular-ATT changeback. Those mistakes are soooo cheap to fix. Not.
Didn’t Microsoft go through this with Hotmail too? I seem to recall they tried to rename Hotmail to Windows Live Mail and eventually put Hotmail back in the name because of brand recognition problems.
@sprocket79: because the fedex brand is so weak?
Don’t they have anything better to do? God, I wish I were an overpaid branding consultant.
@BuddyGuyMontag: In office services? Yeah, it’s weak as shit.
FedEx-Kinko’s has been around for a while now, but in the eyes of most people, FedEx is still synonymous with overnight shipping and nothing else. Kinko’s, on the other hand, is the entire fucking category.
What a terrible idea. Paul Orfalea’s company has long since been stripped of its integrity. Now here goes its identity.
Too bad. He built such a great brand around a name that others gave him for his weird hair in college.
While I don’t agree with the name, I really hope this means that ANYONE at a ‘Fedex Office’ will be able to help me with a Fedex shipment.
I can remember at least 4 times that I’ve gone in looking to ship something, where there is no one who knows how to ship my package through fedex… “Sorry we just know how to copy and bind” (aka… all the Kinko’s stuff).
I’m still gonna call it “Stinko’s”.
Stupid, as everyone else is saying.
Spend the millions of dollars upgrading those craptacular work stations so that (a) they are actually attached to a working internet connection and (b) they can manage to open a word doc. I’ve seen more computing power at an inner-city public library.
@BuddyGuyMontag: As spinachdip pointed out, yes, it is weak if they are aiming for the business to continue as a copy/office services type of company.
I actually think they have a pretty good thing going with the FedEx Kinko’s co-branding. It recalls the strengths of both companies.
Take the UPS Store for example – did you know you could do copies and laminating and faxing (although not at the same level as Kinko’s) at the UPS Store? Most people don’t. The only two times I’ve stepped foot into a UPS Store was for UPS delivery purposes. They don’t come to the top of my mind for anything else. Same thing will happen to FedEx.
They shouldn’t do that. Kinkos is fun to say, FedEx is not.
And here I thought it was a place where you could get medium-to-high-count color copying and printing on non-standard stock.
I had no idea that by getting protest flyers copied or organizational calling cards printed on card stock made me a small business in search of a back office.
nnnnnnnnnnoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
@sprocket79:
110% agree.
It’s an interesting change… but perhaps made because all of us who were in college when it was Kinko’s are now employed and can use our networked office printers when we need to make our garage sale flier, and the new generation knows them as Fedex Kinko’s anyways. I think one of the major problems with Kinko’s as a whole is that access to their bread and butter services has increased so much and dropped so far in price for what was their core customer (college students, college professors, self employed) that they probably need to make a lot of changes to stay afloat.
Must be the same marketing team that got Borland to change its name to Inprise 10 years ago, then change it back 3 years later.
@Ash78: @MissPeacock: Seriously. When I read the blurb, my first thought was, “Are they going to stop doing copying and printing? Where will I go when I need photocopies at 2 a.m.?”
I wish I were kidding about the copies.
Fail. On multiple levels.
I have a feeling this has something to do with the resignation of Ken May as CEO of FedEx Kinko’s. The new kid on the block, Brian Phillips, must really love his NBC shows.
I hope Kinkos kept their receipt for this.
FedEx was possibly upset because I still called them Kinko’s.
This is kinda like when Palm Pilot dropped the Pilot, but none of their customers stopped using it. Then they split into PalmOne and PalmSource, names which no customer actually ever acknowledged existed.
Then one of them (no one really remembers which) reverted back to the original Palm name, and finally settled on the name “Apple Newton” to reflect on their relevance in the market.
FedEx should sell the Kinkos name to some “marital aid” manufacturer where finally it would make sense.
Booo, FedEx. I guess Kinko’s was just too fun to say–and too 90s. The freewheeling 90s are over, and it’s time for the name of this company to reflect the Very. Serious. Nature. of today’s corporate world.