REBRANDING STRATEGY

Mark Zuckerberg confirms Facebook’s corporate rebrand to ‘Meta’

By our News Team | 2021

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp retain their individual names, but the holding company rebrands to reflect a new direction.

As was widely predicted by social media watchers and marketing experts, Facebook has indeed changed its corporate name to Meta as part of a major rebranding strategy.

The change was confirmed by the social media giant’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, at the company’s recent Connect 2021 conference. However, the name change only applies to the holding company, which means that the individual social media platforms – such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – keep their existing names.

Zuckerberg’s official reason for the change is that the company believes it will better encompass what it does, as it broadens its reach beyond social media into areas like virtual reality (VR) and the much-hyped metaverse.

Meta/Facebook

Metaverse still a fairly nebulous concept

The latter remains fairly nebulous to most people, but is being described is an online world where people can game, work and communicate in a virtual environment, often (but not exclusively) using VR headsets.

Cynics are also suggested that management sees the rebrand as a way to help distance the organisation from some of the negative publicity that Facebook (the social media platform) has received in recent years. Most recently, former employee Frances Haugen has accused Facebook of putting “profits over safety” and “making hate worse”.

In his announcement, Zuckerberg said the existing corporate brand could not “possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future” and consequently needed to be updated to encompass future products.

Identity must reflect the new direction

“Over time, I hope that we are seen as a metaverse company and I want to anchor our work and our identity on what we’re building towards,” he explained.

“We’re now looking at, and reporting on, our business as two different segments – one for our family of apps and one for our work on future platforms.

“And as part of this, it is time for us to adopt a new company brand to encompass everything that we do, to reflect who we are and what we hope to build.”

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