Perhaps AOL Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons should have stolen a line from his old boss Gerald Ford to describe the impending removal of the letters "AOL" from the company's
name. (Parsons was associate director for the White House domestic counsel, 1975-1977). "Our long national nightmare is over," said Ford after succeeding Richard Nixon, who
resigned as president in 1974 due to the Watergate scandal. Although the AOL Time Warmer debacle doesn't qualify as a constitutional crisis, the words would not have been
inappropriate, what with AOL driving the company into the financial ground and sparking federal investigations into the company's advertising sales practices. There's already been
a blizzard of books about what has arguably been one of the worst mergers in U.S. corporate history, and more are sure to follow. See next week's issue of PR NEWS for the role PR
plays in corporate name changes.
What’s in a Name (Cont’d) …
