Citrus fruits are taking over the world?

So, I'm beginning to wonder if we have missed something. In our new business, El 3atal and I completely overlooked the entire citrus family of names. I wouldn't even have considered them, but the rebranding of the Jordan Telecom Group's companies to Orange makes me wonder if we should have named our new company Grapefruit, you know to be ahead of the trend. So, as you can guess, I'm going to talk about this new name and look... Orange. Alright, I have to say it out loud, I think it's stupid. Of course, I do have reasons, so let me share them.

1. Orange has NO brand recognition in town. Now, for launching a new brand, that's fine, but taking a well established set of brands with meaningful names and moving them to unknown meaningless names makes no sense to me. You've lost all of the corporate name recognition you had. Admittedly, with a monopoly in one area and a near monopoly in a second, name recognition isn't that important, which brings me to the second point...
2. They're wasting buckets of money trying to introduce the new brand. They've got ads in the newspapers, magazines, on buses, on billboards, everywhere. They developed a very appealing, terribly cute little character to represent the brand. I like it, it's approachable, but...
3. It's impossible to tell from the name and the ads what in the world this company does. They paired their cute little Orange guy (who isn't necessarily orange) with, well, nothing. There's no explanation of who Orange is, what it replaces, what they do. None. It's just cute little people saying hello to the market. So, hello, but why do I care? As an illustration of this, Helper Bean and I were coming back from the grocery store this week when she said to me, "Madame, I have a question for you. What is Orange?" Talk about a rebranding gone awry. She has been seeing the signs, billboards, ads, and has NO IDEA what Orange is. What a waste of money.
4. It's a color (or a fruit). In the entire rainbow of colors, I have to admit orange is my least favorite, but I wouldn't be a fan of naming the company after Pink or Green either. And, when you make T-shirts, if they're orange, everyone will look bad in them (I mean have YOU ever seen anyone look good dressed in orange?). The cars zipping about town look silly with a square orange block on them. And, oranges are round, so what gives?

I guess, the bottom line is, I'm wondering what the consultant who dreamed this up was thinking. I'll take a stab at it: it's simple, everyone can spell it, everyone's heard of orange (maybe I have a future in advertising). I have to say, I think those are pretty lame reasons. And, one more word about their advertising campaign. The new billboard that is on the 5th circle (or is it the 6th) covering the road signs, what was the municipality thinking?!

All in all, I'm neither convinced that any amount of marketing will make people stop calling Jordan Telecom Jordan Telecom nor that the choice of Orange was inspired by anything more than the desire for the money that comes to all of the vendors when such a change is made.

Happy grapefruit!