United States of America eSeries: Introducing 'Kyndryl'

Introducing 'Kyndryl'

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It's Allison here, back from that safari Dave mentioned last week. And by safari, I of course mean going to the dog park and bingeing true crime shows on my couch. Let's get into it.

by Allison Morrow

🤨 WHAT'S IN A NAME?

There's a new member in the pantheon of the worst-named companies in history. Introducing "Kyndryl."

That is the actual name of the IT services unit that IBM is spinning off from its core business.

Soon, the 90,000 employees affected by the change will no longer say they work for "IBM" — perhaps one of the more classic, unambiguous corporate names ever — but instead for "Kyndryl," a portmanteau whose meaning and pronunciation aren't immediately clear.

IBM says the "kyn" part of the name is derived from is the word "kinship," and "dryl" comes from tendril, which it said should bring "to mind new growth and the idea that ... the business is always working toward advancing human progress."

Somehow, explaining it just makes it worse. We can deduce that the pronunciation, based on IBM's stated logic, is "KIN-drill," but the seemingly arbitrary use of Ys as vowels opens the door to long-I interpretation: KINE-drile?

REMEMBER THESE?

To be fair, it's not easy to come up with a new name, and sometimes it works. Häagen-Dazs? Completely made-up words that mean nothing. And Verizon, a mashup of "veritas" and "horizon," sounded weird 20 years ago when Bell Atlantic and GTE merged.

Still, the history of Corporate America is lousy with questionable branding decisions — many of them instant flops — that have left customers scratching their heads. Here are just a few favorite doozies compiled by CNN Business:

Tronc: The name given to Tribune Publishing in 2016 as the traditional media company tried to position itself as "a content curation and monetization company." The name didn't last any longer than those buzzwords, and the Tribune name returned in 2018.
Quibi: A mashup of "quick bites," came and went in only six months, not because the name was so bad but because the much-hyped streaming service failed so quickly.
Academi: The second rebranding attempt by controversial military contractor Blackwater, which was booted out of Iraq in 2007. It initially tried the name Xe in 2009, before changing to Academi in 2011.
Stellantis: A newcomer on the list, it's the company formed by the merger earlier this year of Fiat Chrysler and French automaker PSA Group (itself a relatively new name for the company that made Peugeot.) It's been a few months and I still hear, "Ask your doctor if Stellantis might be right for you…"

⚠️ NUMBER OF THE DAY

$2.8 billion

China's government ordered Alibaba to pay a record fine of 18.2 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) after antitrust regulators said the online shopping giant had been behaving like a monopoly. The penalty is a clear message from regulators that no private enterprise – even one as successful as Alibaba — is beyond Beijing's grip.

📦 BUSTED

On Friday, Amazon handily crushed the union drive at its Bessemer, Alabama, facility after about 70% of workers voted against unionization.

It's a huge victory for Amazon, which is notoriously anti-union and has successfully quashed all attempts at worker organizing at its US operations.

WHY IT MATTERS

The Bessemer plant effort emerged as a potential turning point for the labor movement in the United States. Celebrities and politicians, including President Biden, offered support to the plant's organizers. Had the union effort succeeded, it would have been the first Amazon union in the US, and it almost certainly would have galvanized nascent efforts elsewhere.

It also put Amazon's hardball tactics — like mandatory anti-union meetings and propaganda flyers posted in the bathroom stalls —under national scrutiny.

The union behind the Bessemer campaign said it would file objections with the labor board.

BIG PICTURE

Labor advocates say the fight is nowhere near over. The national interest in Bessemer reflects a growing concern about labor rights in the United States, where union participation has been falling for decades.

The pandemic, in particular, has made the chasm between Amazon's executives (who got richer as the company's stock price surged during the lockdown) and its workers (some of whom accused the company of prioritizing profits and productivity) wider than ever.

🌤️ QUOTE OF THE DAY

What we're seeing now is really an economy that seems to be much at an inflection point…We feel like we're at a place where the economy's about to start growing much more quickly and job creation coming in much more quickly. The outlook has brightened substantially.

Brightened, indeed. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, aka J-Money, aka Feddy Mercury, gave an upbeat assessment of the US economy in an interview with "60 minutes" on Sunday. More people are getting vaccinated and businesses are reopening and that's good news. But he warned the recovery could still be sapped if Covid-19 cases surge.

RELATED: Powell also shared that cyberattacks, more than anything else, are the number one risk to the global financial system.

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

📈The price of one bitcoin is back above $60,000, and not far from its all-time high, as investors gear up for this week's eagerly awaited direct listing of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global.

🔥Dozens of business leaders, including the heads of Target, American Airlines and Merck, held a Zoom brainstorming session over the weekend to discuss ways to fight controversial voting restrictions proposed in states around the country. Among their ideas: reconsidering campaign donations to candidates who back the restrictions, which critics say are designed to repress minority voters.

💰Microsoft agreed to buy artificial intelligence developer Nuance in a deal worth $16 billion — a bold acquisition that could solidify Microsoft's growing influence in the health care industry.