A Creative Communications Agency

I just started noticing that the corporate giant is going through a name change and am not sure why.

Wal-Mart was the beginning, from what I remember, and then they decided to drop the - and add a *. That’s nice, it gives more style to the name. Now I am seeing Walmart as one word. In TV, print and web, the name has been amended to one word. Why would they change this seemingly insignificant factor? I’m sure it wasn’t done without some serious research and data backing up the decision.

Could it be the web factor? If you have ever done a search on the web you probably misspelled or entered what you thought was the correct name for a brand or company. Sometimes we don’t include the hyphens, spaces, or creative spellings of names. If you were searching the web for Wal-Mart would you add the hyphen? probably not. Google search data can show you what words people are searching to find your company. Wal-Mart could have seen that ‘walmart’ was a higher search and used that as the reasoning.

Or, is Wal-Mart too corporate looking? K-Mart has removed the - in most instances. The competition could have influenced the change as well. Target is a word, easy to type and looks good in a logo. Walmart looks like a nice name, easier to type and doesn’t have that intrusive hyphen in the middle.

Along with tweak to the name it looks like Wal-Mart is updating its visual image as well. Colors seem to have been changed slightly, the logo has been changed slightly, and the style of their ads has changed - slightly. I’m not sure what they are up to but something is going on - slightly.