So What's In a Name? Lots of Spin

By: David Lazarus

It's awfully hard not to sneer as Philip Morris, home of the Marlboro Man, attempts to slink away from its deadly past by changing its name to Altria. How is this amusing? Let us count the ways:

• Philip Morris' chief executive, Geoffrey Bible, argues that adopting an empty, thoroughly unrelated moniker "should help clarify our corporate identity".
  Excuse me?
  
  
• Altria, the company says, is coined from altus, the Latin word for "high", which is a curious thing to emphasize if you're the world's leading nicotine dealer.
  
  
• Best of all, it turns out that another U.S. company has already claimed the Altria name - Altria Healthcare of Birmingham, Ala.
  Health care? You couldn't ladle the irony on any thicker than that.
  
  

"Who would have ever imagined that the largest tobacco company would wish to change their name to that of our little company?" asked Stacy Smith, a spokeswoman for Altria Healthcare, which has a dozen employees and helps doctors handle their billing.

We'll return in a moment to Altria Healthcare's peculiar situation and how the company is trying to fight back. But first, let's take a closer look at the name that Philip Morris is so keen to appropriate.

"There's nothing inherently wrong with the word Altria", said David Placek, president of Sausalito's Lexicon Branding, a leading name-consultation firm. "But a name either brings something of value or just sits there. Altria just sits there." Worse, he and other linguists are quick to note that Altria, because of its strategically placed "r," does not parse logically to the Latin root altus. Rather, the logical derivation for Altria would seem to be "altruism", an unselfish devotion to the well being of others. Now there's a funny thing for the maker of Marlboro, Virginia Slims and Benson & Hedges to be saying. Talk about spin control.

Placek said it's never a good strategy for a company to attempt a name change in hopes of distancing itself from some nasty corporate legacy. "You need to convey a sense of going somewhere, not getting away from something", he said. But Ira Bachrach, head of San Francisco's NameLab Inc., said it seems that Philip Morris' goal in changing linguistic clothes is not so much to mask its tobacco roots but to instead highlight the diversity of its current product line. "They make a lot of things and felt the cigarette heritage was dragging down their stock", he said. "They wanted a name that doesn't say 'cigarettes' the way 'Philip Morris' does."

Indeed, Philip Morris also happens to be America's biggest food company. Its Kraft Foods division is responsible for Cheez Whiz, Velveeta and Oreos, among numerous other products. Yet tobacco still accounts for the bulk of Philip Morris' vast global revenues. The company produces more than 1 billion cigarettes a day domestically - including, it was reported yesterday, a new holiday-themed smoke just in time for Christmas. And that's precisely what Philip Morris is trying to downplay.

Since the new name is intended to convey a wide array of corporate interests, Bachrach said it's probably smart to avoid obvious alternatives like "Philmo" or "PM Corp". He also said an abstract word like Altria does the job better than something with a specific image, such as "Apple" or "Yahoo" or "Amazon". "This particular abstract word is not the eighth wonder of the world", Bachrach said, "but it does manage to free them from a name that says 'tobacco'". And, incredibly, it seizes for Philip Morris a name that, to date, has been associated primarily with the concept of health care.

Altria Healthcare was established in 1997 to help streamline operations in medical offices and improve billing procedures. The company is, of course, highly specialized and (until now) was unknown to most consumers. But for those who do know of Altria Healthcare - members of the medical profession - it's no small thing for the name to be shared with the Big Daddy of Big Tobacco. "What happened really has been a catastrophe for the company", said Warren Smedley, Altria Healthcare's CEO. "There has not been a day since [Philip Morris'] announcement that we have not taken calls from clients and those in the health care sector who cannot do business with a company with this same name."

Be that as it may, the law says two companies can share an identical name if they are not competitors or in similar lines of work. Philip Morris' position is that its Altria meets both requirements. "The issue is whether the other company shares the same business as your own", said Peggy Roberts, a Philip Morris spokeswoman. "In our case, that's not an issue. We're in very different lines of business." She said Philip Morris intends to proceed with a shareholder vote on the name change in April. If approved, the switch would be effective immediately. And if Altria Healthcare chooses to fight, so be it. "We have a lot of lawyers", Roberts said without the slightest exaggeration.

Experts I spoke with suspected that Altria Healthcare would have a difficult if not impossible time going toe to toe with a behemoth like Philip Morris, and that the latter's argument about being in radically different businesses would probably hold sway in court. Nevertheless, Altria Healthcare plans to share survey data with Philip Morris this week supporting its contention that sharing a name with the world's largest cigarette manufacturer would have a negative impact on Altria's business. They're hoping Philip Morris will have a sudden change of heart. Not likely.

Philip Morris has already spent months and countless lawyer-hours researching the company's name change. "We looked at a lot of different choices", Roberts said. "Altria was the one we liked best."

Altruism? Hardly.