Clicking through and reading the article only strengthed my opinion of the change. I’ve always thought that having Jeeves as the symbol of a search service was a cool idea. And, I’ve not yet found any reasons to think otherwise. Certainly, none of the reasons mentioned in the article made any sense to me. In fact, Ask Jeeves CEO Barry Diller was quoted as describing Ask Jeeves, sorry Ask.com, as “potentially the glue for almost all of our services” which sounds a lot like what an Internet butler would do. Putting that aside, it seems to me that the mindshare Ask Jeeves does have is strongly connected with that name (and therefore the famous character himself).

At the end of the article the following appears:

Only last month, Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz said at a conference in San Jose, Calif., that the butler was “safe for the moment,” CNet reported. At the time, Berkowitz noted that Jeeves was looking leaner than he had in some years.

But physical fitness aside, Diller said Wednesday that the butler has outlived his usefulness. “I don’t see many tears on the floor,” he joked.

Would this be an appropriate time for me to raise my hand? There might not be tears on the floor, but I am sad to see the butler go. Farewell Jeeves.

Link via tech.memeorandum.

Just to recap, here is a list of the current Coke line up:

1. Coca-Cola
2. Caffeine-free Coke
3. Coke with lime
4. Vanilla Coke
5. Cherry Coke
6. Diet Coke
7. Caffeine-free Diet Coke
8. Diet Cherry Coke
9. Diet Coke with lemon
10. Diet Coke with lime
11. Vanilla Diet Coke
12. Diet Coke with Splenda
13. C2

I actually think that some of these are a good ideas, specifically Coke with Lime. I’m a huge Classic Coke fan, and I really like Coke with Lime. I find that the taste is complementary to that of the regular variety. I don’t expect every Coke fan to like it, but lately I’ve been keeping both in my fridge and alternating between the two.

On the other hand, stuff like Vanilla Coke has never made sense to me. The taste is sodissimilarr that it’s really an entirely different drink. Sure, it’s “cola” but so are a lot of other soft drinks, including several sold by the Coca-Cola Company that are not Coke. As I noted I am a huge fan of Coke but I never drink Diet Coke or any of its siblings because they don’t have all of what I like about Coke: the taste, the bite, and the caffeine.

Well, now I guess the folks at Coca-Cola have a new New Coke that they’re calling Coke Zero. I have nothing else to say about that so I’ll just quote Laura Ries again (from the same Origin of Brands post).

Zero does zero for the Coke brand. It is just a further watering down of the Coke brand in the mind of the consumer. Pretty soon, Coke will be so watered down you might as well just call it Dasani.

Yeah, what she said.

The thing that really got me was the transition, or lack of one. RadioShack.ca has been replaced by a media release without a link to the new site. The address is actually written in the release, but it isn’t linked. For that matter, it appears that no one’s managed to find time to add a link to the InterTAN website either. What’s up with that?

In hindsight, this story seems obvious and inevitable. I’d be surprised if Circuit City wasn’t aware of this possibility when they did the deal for InterTAN, and I’m guessing they may have even planned for it. However, when the purchase was originally announced I didn’t see this at all; I actually thought the RadioShack brand had been a big part of the purchase. Now I realize I was wrong.

The words “Radio Shack” still bring to mind some strong images for me, and probably other people. It’s the popular engineering shop: the place you go when you need electronic widgets and whatsits for hooking stuff together. I don’t know about the US stores, but the one’s in Canada don’t seem very interested in filling that niche anymore. And therefore it’s probably just as well for them to be called something else.

There was one other thing that caught my eye in the article. RadioShack general counsel Mark Hill said in a statement, “the most important thing to us was to protect our brand position in Canada.” Now that is probably just spin (or the counsellor doesn’t know what he’s talking about), but maybe the Shack has some designs I haven’t heard about.

In any case, as a sometime sidelines marketer, I’ll be very interested to see how InterTAN tries to sell the Canadian shoppers on whatever new name they end up using, which might just be Circuit City. There’s a good chance I’ll think their campaign is junk when I see it, but I can always hope to be proven wrong.