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November 4, 2007 6:05 AM
Why we changed our name.
You might have noticed that we have changed our name. WorkingForChange and ActForChange are now CREDO Action. Working Assets Wireless is now CREDO Mobile. Working Assets Long Distance is now CREDO Long Distance.
Why?
Talk to us.
Discuss our name change.
What's your CREDO?
Making a difference in '08
That was so Working AssetsAs someone who helped think up the name Working Assets back in the early 1980s, I have a personal stake in the answer. And it is pretty simple. The challenges facing our country and world are massive. I am immensely proud of the nearly $56 million in donations we have generated over the years, and the more than 21 million calls, letters, emails and faxes our members have sent trying to influence decision makers, but the truth is that we need to be bigger so that we can do more.
And we concluded that while the name Working Assets had a proud legacy, it did not clearly convey our belief in running a business dedicated to social change. We needed a name that made our commitment to social change more prominent -- a way to start more conversations with people who share our values but have never heard of us.
We started Working Assets with a set of beliefs and commitments that we still hold. So now we are called Credo - "believe" in Latin.
I believe that CREDO Action is one of the most important ways for our members to put their own beliefs into action. In the coming year, with your engagement, we will do even more than we have done in the past. We will keep fighting to end the war in Iraq, defend the constitution, reverse global warming, and address all the other issues of the day. In a manner consistent with our nonpartisan status, we will register millions of voters, recruit thousands of poll workers, fight efforts to suppress the vote, and deploy innovative ways that encourage everyone to get to the polls on Election Day.
We changed our name on November 4, 2007 - one year to the day before the presidential election of 2008. It is our hope that after that election, we will begin to emerge from the darkest days of the American experiment in democracy. There will be critical battles to restore the constitution, provide universal health care, end the occupation of Iraq, and finally address global warming.
We have started to ask our friends and members to look ahead to 2009 and the inauguration of a new president. What do you hope to be the values and beliefs of that new president? Check out what others are saying at www.whatsyourcredo.com, and then gather your own thoughts and post them for millions to see.
I have no doubt that in the months to come, CREDO Action will be adding to the list of the proudest moments in the history of Working Assets. We helped move the deciding votes in the one-vote victory that enacted a ban on assault weapons. We convinced General Motors to stop testing its female workers in Mexico for pregnancy in order to fire them before they became eligible for social security benefits. We registered more than a million new voters over the last two election cycles. We have staved off relentless efforts to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And much more.
Michael Kieschnick is the president and a co-founder of Working Assets.
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Discussion
This new format is terrible. It's not just the orange and turquoise color scheme (so 70's) but the fact that I have to scroll around to find anything, when the old format everything was easier to find. It's too big, and there's no way to shrink it. Yeeech!
the "so 70's" comment is usually what we hear people say about our old "hand drawn globe" look.
we're excited to update the look of working assets and start to grow our base of activists with our new name.
the credo blog is going to be more focused on the activism of working assets and highlight our political stands. david sirota's blog will be an excellent source of insight and debate on what's happening in the news cycle.
to go directly to the credo blog, you just have to start at credoaction.com/blog/
to go directly to sirotablog to to:
credoaction.com/sirotablog
Credo gives our political work a voice. Working Assets is a great name but Credo will give us an opportunity to reach out and increase the impact of the donations and activism. My credo is no more torture by the US government under any circumstances.
The layout is marginal at best and the colors remind me of those cheap squatter websites. Its aesthetically challenged overall.
And "CREDO", did you folks name test the change? because it sounds a lot like credit card outfit.
Maybe the gen X hipsters like it but I'm not one of them.
Hopefully its a work in progress and not the finished product.
Colors aside, there are some cool features in the new site that you all can look forward to (speaking to the "work in progress" note from Walt above):
there will be quicker ways to get Tom Tomorrow cartoons and Durst's jokes, and to actually add them to your own website, blog, myspace page.
you'll also be able to add a countdown clock on Bush's presidency, our latest online actions and voter registration to your own site.
and on our side, it will be easier to read sirota and our guest columnists.
so we hope these new features help forgive the fact that it will take a little to get used to new colors and a new name.
(ps, i'm a blogger around here, not a guy who uses a lot of the tools i listed above...but even i find them exciting)
I can't believe Working assets sold out to a bunch of losers who try to look like Cingular. Part of the reason I even joined this company was because it didn't have the smarmy colors and what passes for slick advertizing that results in the butt-ugly crap that's plastered all over the internet. I can get that anywhere. What I cannot get is honest willingness to offer a workable solution - attaching some of the cost of the service to supporting causesg - without the other crap.
Now one of the only services that actually did that has decided that this CRAPPY format is better than the straightforward, no frills format. Further the name you chose is idiotic. How is "Credo" (believe) different in spirit from George Bush's "faith based" agenda? Instead of Working ASsets, which is an honest description of what this company was supposed to be doing, you now call yourselves "Believe".
Good going, jerks.
In addition to all of helen999's highly valid complaints, let's look at what we get with the new website: fewer columnists and only *one* cartoonist. And is this reduction of quality and service going to be reflected in our telephone service as well? I "believe" it will be.
Scroll Hell.
Under 'tools' is a cartoon???
Shades of red [orange] and green will look grey on grey to folks that are color blind.
I like pictures of the columnists with a headline, not just the text.
Nothing that ties in the old name/site for recognition; first time I saw this site I thought Working Assets had been hijacked.
In short, the new design sucks.
this is becky bond and i'm the political director of working assets / credo action.
i'm going to address the questions of both helen999 and windowshade here in the comments but will email you both as well in case you want to continue the conversation person to person.
first of all, working assets didn't sell out. we're the same company we've always been run by the same people. i've been at working assets since 1999. and michael and laura - our president and ceo - are cofounders.
we're all still here. we're the same company, with the same people and the same values.
i'm sorry you don't like the colors or the name. there's plenty of other people who think we've been stuck in a rather granola identity and have been anxious for a change.
as for the content of the site, about six months ago we changed the content - though not the design - to focus less on news and commentary that can be found elsewhere on the web - and more on activism. we had found that while we were entertaining a lot of people with our site, these people weren't taking action, volunteering or donating to progressive causes with us in significant numbers. so we decided to focus our resources more on serving the activists rather than the readers. of course we're still the go-to place for tom tomorrow, will durst, and david sirota. along with a handful of columnists like robert scheer and ellen goodman.
if you're read michael's post above, then you have a perspective on why the change. if you haven't, it's worth reading.
Working Assets has done some amazing things in my tenure here. We registered over one million new voters in 2004. We organized to get hundreds of thousands of minor public school children off the lists that the Army uses to recruit new soldiers for Iraq. We've marched. We've made over 75,000 calls to the white house and congress this year alone.
But still look at where we are. The democrats, though in control of the senate and the house don't have a governing majority. An attorney general who won't refute torture is about to fly through the senate on to confirmation. Bush still gets to prosecute his war in Iraq and is planning to attack Iran.
Despite all we've done as a movement, we still have not achieved the change we need to see.
So at working assets we looked at everything we and our members have been doing and while much of it has been magnificent, it has not been enough.
The 2008 election will be a watershed one - not just for the united states but for the planet. And we thought, how can we get bigger and better so we can win on some of the issues where we've made progress but have still not passed the finish line - iraq, global warming, healthcare for all.
Working Assets as a name made a lot of sense when we were running a progressive mutual fund. our long distance members love it. but in order to grow our political lobby bigger, to generate even more funds for progressive groups, we need to get more people to join our mobile phone network both for our services and our rapid response mobile action political program.
we thought about the name change for a long time. and did a lot of research as well. CREDO will help us bring more people into our movement who share our values but have never heard of working assets.
it would have been easier for us to keep doing exactly what we were doing under the same name at the same size. but we were worried if we just kept doing what we had been doing that we wouldn't be able to change the world in ways that i think we can all agree are desperately needed.
that's why we rolled out the change on november 4, 2007, one year before the 2008 election. to signal that this change in our branding is about getting ready for the political challenge of our lifetime.
and we hope to inspire others to make changes as well so that they can do more between now and nov. 4 2008. we all need to give more to progressive groups, to volunteer more, to organize more. otherwise, we may stay on the edge of change, but not achieve our end goal. too much is at stake to stay complacent. we hope you will join us.
and windowshade - rest assured, our telephone service remains amazing. our customer service is the best in the business - just ask any of our members.
I'm sorry to see that you've dropped the number of comics to just Tom Tomorrow. Editorial cartoons do more than just entertain; they're little "thought bombs", capable of transmitting important information quicker than the wittiest blog post. Jen Sorensen's cartoons are some of the best in the medium, and yet you've dropped them. I think this is a mistake, and I hope you change your mind.
Ms. Bond,
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
I've been fortunate (and unfortunate) enough to have been involved in two major site redesigns for two different media sites and can tell you that we had the exact same reaction from some readers. No matter how great a design is and how much planning goes into it, there will always be people that complain and nitpick. What is funny is that one site we redesigned, an alternative news site, had an excellent redesign and we also had readers chiding us for 'selling out,' as if quality designers can't be progressive and a clean design is antithetical to our cause. It was baffling, but we came to realize that some activists get their inspiration from always feeling like they are the oppressed underdog and gritty graphic design conveys that image. (not that you were too gritty before, but perhaps that's what is happening here.)
What is important, as you indicated, is that you continue to do what matters, which is the work. If you lose a few readers because they don't like orange or the slick new look, it should come as no surprise that they weren't the devoted activists to begin with. And if a redesign loses a few readers, but you gain a few thousand because the site and brand are more approachable, you're doing great.
Keep up the great work,
Chris
I just unsubscribed from this place. Anyone who can't come up with any better name (not that there was a danged thing wrong with old one) than Credo (what is it CREEDO? or CREDo as in CREDit card?)
Lame new name. Were you guys hitting the old bong when you came up with it?
So if you are going with a lame new name, then I can only assume the rest of the site is going to be just as bad from now on.
BUT hey, if you guys like it, go for it.
Me?
Like I said, I just unsubcribed.
Have a nice one.
what makes you think our bong is old? : )
+ and -
( + ) I like the bold clean look, with an exception: The orange link color over slate-grey is really bad in terms of usability design. For many people, the eye cannot differentiate a dark-value color over a dark background. but there is an easy solution: You could use that general hue of orange, but you need to lighten its value significantly. Once lightened, it will still be perceived as being the same color pallete of the website, but people with vision impairments of any kind at all will be able to read that text.
( - ) Wow. How does one say anything useful about a name decision you just plain don't like? I figured out why you did it, but in terms of pure communication-value, Act For Change I've always found very very powerful. Your first line of "rationale" in this blog post is "We do more than just talk". Right. Act For Change always communicated that point way more powerfully than that tagline now does. (But I get the marketing-speak that references the core product line of Working Assets -- talk-products, land-line and now mobile too. It's a great GREAT tagline for the mobile phone brand. But when applied to a description of the "Action component" to the company, it's almost self-deprecating -- given what the old name said. But so it goes....)
It is clear it was a marketing move to create a brand name for Working Assets mobile... and I understand the challenge. Probably 95% of the name choice had to do with DOMAIN AVAILABILITY to build a new brand around. You needed short, two syllable, fool-proof spelling as just the baseline requirement for a brand, before you even focused on such a word that conveys your brand image and personality.
The marketing tail wagged the dog on this, that is very evident. And I wish you well with the new wireless brand "Credo" ... It's also clear you wanted to have it live in the marketplace with a fresh impression, and not tied down to "Working Assets", which is not a user-friendly name for a mobile brand. It worked long ago for long distance because back then, it needed to rapidly communicate that it was a win-win proposition: get affordable long distance, and do some social good.
So, it's clear that the branding had to sway between the dueling interests of "new brand" and yet "still associate well with old name".
Personally, I think you shoehorned the rationale of what might very well be a great brand name for mobile products that do social good -- but in a kind of tortured way of "selling" the idea that "Credo" is better than "Act For Change".
I'm just deconstructing the rollout with this name change -- not trying to be snotty. Since I associate more with the progressive ACTION component of the operation, led by the incredible Will Easton, vs the cell service component, that's why I am expressing my reactions.
In the end, the initial distaste for the Action Side of the operation being renamed "Credo Action" will wear off, and the greater value that the name chnage brings to the establishment of a new more-viable brand out in the marketplace will win me over. because without revenue generation, the great work done by Act For Chnage would not be possible.
Best regards, Mr. rh in sf .
P.S. I voted for Will Easton as Mayor of San Francisco (write-in vote). He did not win.
rh in sf,
i'm the designer for credo action, so i wanted to respond to the design portion of your comment. i'm really glad you like the new design (and bummed about the folks above who don't). i worked extremely hard on the redesign and i'm really happy about how much more legible our internal pages are, as well as how much better organized the entire site is.
about the orange links over the slate-grey in the discussion section, thanks for pointing this out. i went ahead and lightened them just now, and you're right. they're much easier to read. thanks!
Hey ben, nice work! I really love this slate grey, and that link color shift made all the difference. I don't know if there was a purposeful intent to extend off the "netroots identity" color of DailyKos (and the new NetrootsNation convention color), but whether intended or not, I think it's a great move. Yours is a redder orange, which I like more than burnt orange. fwiw... I do know, though, how hard it is to find a primary link color that works on both dark and light backgrounds, but in an ideal world where the link color can be adjusted per usage style, I actually think a slighty darker (more redder) orange would read better over that mint green, and would still be perceived as being same as the Credo identity orange. finally, since i'm already overstepping by offering 4 cents and not just 2 cents, from just a personal taste perspective, i don't care for brownish-burnt-orange for a visited link color. But it's a b**** to find a visited link color that would work in the color scheme.
I think your clean bold layout is great, and people will come to love it. when dK changed their site design a year or so ago, the feedback they got was anything but mild. The usual hyperbolic stomp-out-of-the-room reactions like "I am unsubscribing TODAY!" as well as tons of ridiculous submissions/postings from users showing THEIR design, and explaining how much better it was. I'm pretty sure you already expected you'd get some of that since it accompanies any brand/design change.
speaking of which, on a totally tangential note, can you believe that SFgate.com has not once revised their Web 1.0 design? hard to imagine with its cheesy typeface. Thankfully, the LA Times finally revamed their site and brought unity to their online and offline identity. When you combine those developments with CNN's recent overhaul emphasizing clean uncrowded layout with plenty of white space, readability is improving dramatically.
CREDO? Sounds way too religious for a liberal political site.
It would be a stretch to think of a worse name change than to CREDO. Belief stands beyond the need for defending or explanation, and it is this impunity underlying the nature of belief that has us so stuck as a country and unable to confront the intractable problems and belligerent prejudices that are sinking us and degrading life on earth. Belief in belief is an amoral stance, and one historically given to the most horrendous manipulations we have known.
"It is not necessary to think, only believe." - Benito Mussolini
I agree with rh in sf that "Act for Change" was a much clearer name in terms of what you are trying to do with the political activism. It also already has recognition value. "Credo," on the other hand, does not imply action and can easily be associated with religion and hence the religious right and the strident way beliefs seem to be expressed in the current American climate. I don't see why the cell service has to have the same name as your activism program. But then, I never was interested in any of your services anyway.
For the record, in Latin, "credo" technically means "I believe", not just "believe" as you have stated. In English, I think it is can be used as a synonym for "creed", but often specifically refers to the Nicene Creed or the Apostles' Creed. (Just check a dictionary.) Do you really mean to refer to these (i.e., a statement of Christian, and particularly Catholic, beliefs)??
Problem with design here and elsewhere, is that designers rarely consider the sight impaired readers. White on black isn't terribly bad. But there are other known combinations that are more easily readable by people (Like me) with reduced visual acuity. You might consider putting a set of buttons at the top of the page that show color combination choices, so each reader can click on its choice of color.
As for "Credo" what's there to object, after the fact?
I was in a Catholic seminary the first 14 years of my life, and when I hear the word "Credo" a string of Latin words get automatically triggered, with the accompanying Gregorian intonations.
Well, I know your work, and it's valuable, so the name will not disturb me; but how about people who had never heard about you? Will they sign up readily when they see your name?
Today I got my first email with the CREDO headline, and I almost marked it junk...
It's a shame to see a group like yours go "Corporate"--that's what this whole name change thing is--I know corporatism when i see it, and obviously someone got an idea to get some consultant to think up what "they" thought was catchy, and to give you a new "corporate" identity and logo--well, it sounds pretty dumb and irrelevant and arcane--Act for Change was alot better and made the point well and quickly and inspiringly,
hi ruth.
corporate, ouch!
i'm the political director at working assets / credo action and have been working on actforchange since it started in the wake of the stolen 2000 election.
whether or not you like the new name and color scheme, we're still the same people, with the same values, doing the same work. but with renewed vigor just one year out from the 2008 election.
there will be some more differences. we're going to be working harder, and we're going to be responding more quickly. will easton will probably post in this thread again too. he's going out on parental leave next week to spend some time with his baby daughter and as a result you'll be hearing more directly from me for a couple of months.
i think we can all agree that despite control of the house and the senate, democrats don't have a governing majority - and this has devastating consequences for issues we fight for including an end to state-sponsored torture, stopping global warming, bringing the troops home from iraq, and more. check out this blog posting on the 60 vote rule for more on that.
so we must redouble our efforts. grow our citizen lobby. speak out more forcefully. demand more meetings with our representatives. take to the street when we need to. and much more.
credo action is our rallying cry. we don't have to change what most Americans believe. we just have to get more Americans to act on those beliefs. and we're hoping more folks will join us.
all that said, and as excited as i am about it, changing our name was hard for me, too.
I think we have had enough Faith based initiatives already. Has there not been enough damage caused by favoring belief over knowledge? "Credo" just does not sound like an organization I want to be associated with, after all the trouble the Romans caused my ancestors.
Bye.
A Working-class Pict
Do people think religion when they hear "credo"? We don't think so. But we love that our members feel so protective of the Working Assets legacy that they don't want anything to get in the way of our making progressive change together.
We considered a lot of names before settling on CREDO. "Credo" is Latin for "I believe." Credo as a noun is a personal belief statement. We think carrying a mobile phone from Working Assets is a very public statement of progressive beliefs hence we chose "credo" as the name for our mobile service.
What do we believe in? We believe in social change. We believe everyone in this country ought to have health care. We believe that it's a travesty that forces on the right still conspire to deny African Americans the right to vote. We believe that with better stewardship of the earth we can stop global warming.
We also believe in humanism. We believe in the right not to practice religion. We believe in secularism, and in the separation of church and state. And we prove this over and over again -- not just with our collective actions but with donations to groups like the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and People for the American Way to name a few.
It's true that "creed" sometimes is used to refer to someone's religious beliefs. But why should the rightwing get to corner the market on belief and values?
Format is confusing.
I think giving up your known and respected name of Working Assets for an unknown name loses you your name recognition. I think it was a poor choice.
If you were determined to change the name, a transitional period of Working Assets--Credo, that you could later change to Credo would have been advisable.
Silly me, I thought that Working Assets would make a comeback.
No Faith-based initiatives for me, I want us to return to Reason and Rationalism. We, as a species need another Renaissance, after all it's been several hundred years since the last one. What has belief brought us recently? Well, there was the 1980s....did you think that this country became a better place for all that Faith?
I'm gone from this organization, never to return. They have betrayed the reasons I joined in the first place, to support Reason and Workers.
I am very bothered by the name change. Credo sounds like some religious affiliation no matter how you try to spin it.
I find it offensive. And beyond that I'm offended that you gave us as members no choice in the matter.
As an activist and an atheist, I love the name Working Assets. I have used Working Assets Long Distance, I have had a Working Assets VISA card, and I currently have Working Assets cell phone service. I've added my name and raised my voice often in support of the Working Assets position on issues.
This name -- Credo -- I do not want to be associated with. If you keep this name, as soon as my cell phone contract runs out, I'm gone.
The name change is a BIG MISTAKE
Working Assets and PARTICULARLY Act for Change have meaning .. have name recognition .. it's called branding. Plain english has meaning. CREDO has absolutely NO MEANING to anyone .. it convey's no indication of the purpose of the organization. What you have done is like changing Pepsi to Fuzzy.
Your reasoning .. at least that expressed in the explanation .. is faulty. If there was a business need related to the telephone operation, fine .. but DON'T ABANDON YOUR BRANDED PRODUCTS.
I've had a Working Assets VISA card since 1986. When I got it, the fact that profits were distributed to worthwhile organisations based on member input really appealed to me. The founder (a woman whose name I can't remember) seemed practical and idealistic at the same time. I encouraged everyone I knew to get a Working Assets credit card.
Through the years Working Assets has tried to become more involved in areas other than credit card finance: long distance telephone, direct political action, etc.
I see the name change as an attempt to create a less confrontational, blander corporate identity that may make it easier to solicit money and support. 'Working Assets' and 'Act for Change' told a person exactly what one could expect from such a group. 'Credo' [and mind you, I majored in Classical Philology - over 16 years of Latin] tells me nothing about the group. Yes, it does have a quasi religious sound [maybe because I am a lapsed Catholic ;-)]; and yes it has a faint credit rehab sound; and yes it has a kind of Ayn Randish overtone; and yes, since most people aren't going to pronounce it "cray-doh"[the latinate form] but "cree-doh" many will think of some vague janitorial product they can't quite place. But I digress...
Well, it's 2007 and I'm sure the younger and more tragically hip folks you need to bring into the corporate fold will appreciate a two syllabic name.
A rose by any other name, etc. etc.
I'd have to say I agree with most of the commenters here that the new name and color scheme are pretty repellant. The design is very Howard Johnsons-esque , and I'd be surprised if it's Section 508 compliant. Also, the name Credo definitely sounds like a religious organization, and even if you get past that, it doesn't describe what the organization does the way ActForChange did. If there's any possible way to back out of this, I hope you'll do it, or it's going to be difficult to attract new supporters for the important work you do.
I was surprised and unhappy to receive notification that Working Assets has changed its name without consulting members. You have members vote on where donations go. Why not have members vote on whether they like this name change? I DON'T LIKE IT AT ALL!!
A few days ago I sent a message to "Credo™" commenting negatively on the new name. Today I received a form letter from someone named Kelly thanking me for my "continued support" and making it clear that this person had not bothered to actully read my message. It was suggested that I read Mr. Kieschnick's blog on the reasons for the name change, which is how I came to this site. I was going to copy my message here but in scrolling through the discussion I am encouraged to see that most of the comments share my displeasure and express it better than I did, so I will just reiterate my question about how much money that might otherwise have gone to the Progressive Causes we are supposed to be supporting did "Credo™" spend on this gratuitous and unnecessary name change.
The company spokespeople on this blog protest that they have not "gone corporate" and I would like to believe them but I have to wonder. Name changes and new logos and slick website makeovers are standard practice in the corporate world. So are soulless form responses to customer comments. And,I just had to agree to the Terms Of Service of some outfit called TypeKey before I was allowed onto this site to make this post. It obligated me to post my email address to do so, which I guess I'm alright with and hope I don't come to regret, but--did any of you read this document? We have agreed that any post we make here can be, among other things, copied, modified and exploited by them with no compensation or further permission.
Who the fuck is TypeKey?
Mr. Kieschnick thinks he is gonna stop the war and stuff by imitating the very marketing school focus group driven crap that we came to his company to get away from? Well, the Democrats in Congress seem to think that they're doing OK too, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised but I am very, very disappointed.
I believe the name change to Credo a mistake (Credo? Huh?). It could have easily been avoided by consulting your members first. They could have prevented this problem for you. Not only that, had you asked your member base to come up with new name suggestions, you would have received lots of killer ideas that you never thought of, for free. And then if you have the members vote on them, you could have easily had the name with the broadest appeal.
But for some reason you chose the exact opposite approach.
I know your idea will be that it's too late to avoid the change to Credo, and that abandoning the Credo idea will make you lose face because it will show that you jumped into this without planning, but it's the opposite: Sticking to what's not working just because you set the wheels in motion means that you're stuck with a brand that doesn't work for you, and that hurts your image more.
Maybe you think I'm wrong that the new name is a bad choice. Maybe so, but why don't we find out for sure? Poll your members (all of them) to see what name(s) they prefer:
o Working Assets
o Credo
o Something else
yes, I agree, big mistake
return to working assets
better name CREDO?? ummmmmm....
and i will switch phone and sign up for CC and maybe contact you about our work with small scale fishermen in latin America
Viva El Frente/Verde[.org]
Wasn't the reason you changed your name because someone somehow breached your security? a few weeks ago? If so you should present your changes in that light and bring in the issues surrounding that!
dan_illustration: we didn't change our name because of a security breach at a vendor we use. but we changed our name at the same time that it happened. the name change was in the works for quite some time. for more info on the security breach at convio, go here.
change is hard. it's hard for us, too. we've been working assets for a long time. the company remains working assets. but the name of our lead service - our mobile phone - and our activism program have changed to credo.
it's short. it's secular (just like we are). it expresses something essential about what we do.
with the new name we believe we can grow stronger and create more change faster. the need to accelerate the pace of progressive success is something i hope we can all agree on.
I wish you luck with your name change. Perhaps for gen-x'ers and younger folks, it does not have such strong negative connotations.
However, for lapsed catholics old enough to remember the Latin mass, "Credo" sounds about as inviting as a product marketed to Native Americans (aka Indians) and brand named "Custer". It probably has similar connotatoins to former Baptists, former Mormons, and other survivors of religious abuse at the hands of the Christian zealots who form the religious arm of the oppressive forces of this country. This is not a hyperbole, comparing the Catholic or Christian church with Custer; if you consider the history of how Catholicism or Christianity conquored Europe and destroyed the indigenous peoples and cultures, you'll see parallels with what happened here. And some of us remember in our bones.
If the new name gets you more mobile customers, enough of an increase in mobile customers to justify the name change, that's good. But if these new customers think they're joining a right wing religious phone network, they may be disappointed and drop your service when they find out what you really stand for.
Time will tell. If you don't get the customer base that you expect, I hope you'll be smart enough to admit you made a mistake, and correct it. I hope you won't make like Bush and "stay the course" to disaster.
This is especially frustrating to read about good ol' non-partisan Working Assets caring about the Democrats having a governing majority. How many more excuses can we give these gutless warmakers? Let's give them a governing majority so we can leap into a war with Iran! This is especially frustrating when we are setting up a pre-fascist state in the US of A, and the solid idea of a business committed to some core of values is apparently falling prey to the competitive underpinnings of the status quo. Yes, our spending supports worthy non-profits, but it simultaneously supports Bank of America, Sprint, etc., etc.
We need bold leadership these days, not some faint hope that some Democrat is going to swoop in and get this nation on the right track. We need to get more sophisticated with our money, so that we STOP supporting these corporate beasts so they stop destroying the planet and its people.
Hello bbond - looking at your comment:
"it's short. it's secular (just like we are). it expresses something essential about what we do."
...I agree that the name is short. So far, so good.
On the 2nd part, it's great that you intend the name to be secular and that your organization actually is secular, but you picked a very very non-secular word as your new name. Perception is very important in dealing with the public -- if people hear a name and think "religious zealots", that works against what you're trying to do, regardless of your intentions.
On the 3rd part, yes, it expresses something essential, but unfortunately something *inaccurate* -- that you're a bunch of religious zealots and probably right-wingers. Unless you add a subtitle, e.g. "Credo -- not affiliated with the religious right" -- you're going to have serious image problems.
And let's not forget the other big problem here, namely that the new site design and color scheme are HIDEOUS!!
Just my two cents... I wish you continued good luck with your activism efforts.
You know, I just remembered the 2006 anti-war march in New York, co-sponsored by Working Assets... And your flashy printed signs calling for... WAR.
"Out of Iraq, Into Darfur" was the call.
Shameful.
hey, i wrote that slogan. and I'm proud of it and the other slogans on the thousands of posters we gave away that day. those slogans included: Osama Bin Forgotten, Bush lost Iraq, Another _____ for Peace (where you get to write in the blank), and Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote.
I don't know of any other phone companies who are working to end the war in Iraq by printing and distributing free protest signs.
Your unilateral name change was a dumb idea. First, you didn't invite the members of Working Assets to participate in the process which simply flies in the face of the great tradition of member-advised donations that was a hallmark of your company. Second, you could have offered us several choices: 5 proposed new names, or the option to keep the original. Third, you haven't revealed to us how much money you spent exploring new names and how much it will cost to make the change.
It's very disappointing to see you folks sucumb to convential business practices regarding "re-branding" for the sake of appearences and PR artifice. Unwittingly, you are sending exactly the wrong signal to many of us (loyal customers like me, who have been with you for over 14 years). My concern is that you have become what the members of Working Assets have come to dispise in Corporate America - slick,superficial, trendy, watered down and image obsessed.
I used to revel in the fact that when a telemarketer called trying to entice me with their credit card, I could turn the tables on them and ask, "And does your card contribute millions of dollars to groups like Amnesty International, Greenpeace, People for the American Way, the ACLU, or the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy?" That was a guaranteed script-stopper right there. But I have less confidence in promoting the company when you make poor decisions like this.
Finally, all of your justifications for why you changed the name to promote the values of our collective Credo don't add up to a good reason for changing the brand name. Instead, you could have created a "Credo" program within the umbrella of Working Assets and promoted it in the same way that you're doing now (by asking people to share their values directly). It just seems like a collosal waste of time and resources without any democratic vetting process - a surprisingly short-sighted move from a company I used to hold in the highest esteem.
I had a very strong negative gut reaction to the word "Credo" - it goes beyond religious, it sounds like a cult! But that's just me. Hope it "works"!
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