AOL rebranding to “Aol,” that should fix it

In other news, AOL is still around.

AOL announced rebranding plans sunday, losing the all-caps “AOL” and changing the brand’s name to the much catchier and sensical “Aol.” (Owl? Awl?) Along with the new pronunciation being rolled out by the net-dinosaur, AOL is changing the look of its logo, too.

Gone is the little circle in a triangle you may remember from a shower of free disks and CDs in the late 90s. Aol is taking the risky move of not committing to a single image or palette of colors, settling on a rotation of goldfish, flowers, a squiggle and other random items meant to convey… well, that’s not exactly clear. AOL says the visual marketing is “one consistent logo with countless ways to reveal.”

One thing that seems to be missing from the rebranding effort is content. Upon seeing news of the rebrand today, I knocked around the old AOL site a bit and found it to be exactly as watered down and clunky as it was the last time I was exposed to it, at work a few years ago. If AOL is banking solely on keeping the users who are afraid of an internet unfiltered by AOL and the really, really habitual, no amount of goldfish or prop-rockers can save it. A nebulous statement made in the rebranding press-release seems to indicate that not much is going to change there:

“Our new identity is uniquely dynamic. Our business is focused on creating world-class experiences for consumers and AOL is centered on creative and talented people – employees, partners, and advertisers. We have a clear strategy that we are passionate about and we plan on standing behind the AOL brand as we take the company into the next decade,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL.

Still not getting it? Me neither, but you can watch the video that accompanied the press release below: