At the BearingPoint
Walker skewers their rebranding campaign (and the hackneyed business cliches it invokes) which tries to leverage KPMG's existing equity while still separating the new company from the old. Though he doesn't mention one important fact: that cookie-cutter phraseology probably focus-tested really well with KPMG's core customers. The people who hire companies like BearingPoint expect that "we don't walk, we run" crap.
Walker also leaves the new name untouched. BearingPoint... what does it mean? It's a reference to a compass, sure, but does it indicate that they have a direction, or that they need a direction? Are they taking their directions while they're running? (I can tell you from orienteering experience, navigating while running is tricky enough. Navigating with a compass while running is virtually impossible because the needle bounces around. You really have to stop to get a good compass reading.) Further, in this market, doesn't "bear" have decidedly negative connotations?
Much has already been written about the creation and selection of brand names (e.g. this Salon article or this NY Times article; just for fun, read the Salon piece and then go to Jamcracker.com). There are dozens of companies and at least one software product (NameRazor) that will churn out potential company names for you.
I suppose it's up to the branding gurus to take a name that's phonetically correct and memetically evocative and infuse it with the essence of the company. Which is great, but it sort of assumes that consumers will be exposed to the brand. In the case of BearingPoint, Accenture, Monday (formerly PWC Consulting and now a part of IBM), Razorfish, &c, you couldn't deduce their business from their name. This is also true of IBM. Forty years ago their name referred to their actual business; today it refers to a squishy conglomerate that still makes computers but is mainly about consulting (which they call Global Services if I'm not mistaken).
There's a section in Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think where he talks about the importance of a good tagline. Perhaps there's a profitable side business there--really good taglines to elucidate your meaningless brand name. (And I'll call it Really Good Taglines, "the name says it all.")
