Branding
Why swapping a name customers trust for a story investors like is a bad trade, even when the profits roll in.
About Strategy, Edition #28
Nobody in the UAE ever woke up wanting to buy their mobile plan from an ampersand.
That was my first thought in 2022, the day e& was unveiled. I read the logic and understood what the “&” was for. It told investors that a utility had become a technology group. It told the customer nothing.
My bet was simple: within a few years, the old name would be back. On 6 October 2026, it was. “Etisalat is the name we are taking forward,” the company told the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange. Calling it early feels good, but the useful question is a different one: what did the four-year detour cost?
Here is the fact that makes this story worth your time. Under the e& name, the group had the best years in its history. Revenue rose from AED 53.3 billion in 2021 to AED 72.9 billion in 2025, and net profit climbed 55%.
So if you came here for “the rebrand destroyed value”, I cannot give you that. The P&L never noticed the name. Most of that growth came from more than US$20 billion of acquisitions, not from the ampersand.
Brand value went up too, but that is arithmetic. It is calculated from revenue, and the group bought a lot of revenue. Brand strength is the more honest signal: it measures what people feel and do, from familiarity to loyalty.
In 2022, Etisalat was rated the strongest telecom brand in the world, with a Brand Finance strength score of 89.2. In 2024, still trading as “etisalat by e&”, it scored 89.4. Then the Etisalat name came off the consumer brand, and the next reading was 84.6. stc, which never renamed, sits at 88.6.
| Year | Brand | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Etisalat | 89.2 |
| 2023 | etisalat by e& | 89.1 |
| 2024 | etisalat by e& | 89.4 |
| 2025 | e& | 84.6 |
| 2026 | e& | 85.8 |
stc 2026, never renamed: 88.6. Source: Brand Finance Brand Strength Index.
The villain is a corporate story wearing the customer’s clothes. e& was a good investor narrative, and the 2022 plan knew it. “etisalat by e&” let the group tell its new story while customers kept the name they had trusted for decades.
The trouble started when that bridge came down. By 2024 the consumer brand was plain “e& UAE”. A family in Al Ain renewing a home plan does not buy a portfolio thesis. They buy the network they have known since their parents had a landline.
Etisalat is not the first big brand to rename itself and regret it. It is also not proof that every rename fails.
Statoil became Equinor in 2018 and it held. It had sold its petrol stations years earlier, so no customer had to forget anything.
Facebook Inc. became Meta in 2021 and kept Facebook on the app. Investors got the new story. Users kept their name.
Royal Mail became Consignia in 2001 and was Royal Mail again about 15 months later.
Tropicana changed only its pack in 2009. Sales fell around 20% in two months, and the old pack came back.
Twitter became X in 2023. Brand Finance puts the brand’s value at US$5.7 billion in 2022 and under US$700 million by 2024.
The pattern is hard to miss. Change the name on the building and you will probably be fine. Change the name in the customer’s head and you pay, fast.
A name is the most valuable distinctive asset a brand owns. It is the one thing every customer already knows how to find, say and recommend. Renaming it resets a clock that took decades to wind.
The bill is not only the signage, the apps and the agency fees, paid once going out and once coming back. It is four years of media doing a double job: selling the product and teaching the name. And when a name comes back six months after a new CEO arrives, the market reads it as preference, not strategy. That costs trust in the next big decision too.
Before anyone in your building proposes a new name, ask three questions.
Is there evidence the current name is hurting us with customers, not just boring us in meetings?
Does the new name serve the customer, or our story about ourselves?
Would we still choose it if the CEO changed tomorrow?
If the answers are no, no and no, you do not need a new name. You need a better strategy, told under the name people already trust. And if the group truly needs a new identity, do what Meta did and what Etisalat did first: change the name on the building, and leave the name in the customer’s head alone.
Stay strategic, my friends
Joao Ruas, Senior Marketing Strategist and Founder of About Strategy
Twenty years across global agencies, consultancies and brands in the GCC, Europe and Africa, helping leadership teams make clearer marketing decisions.
Want the full case? I have turned this edition into a case study: the full financial and brand data, five exhibits, seven rebrand comparisons and The Rename Test you can take into your next boardroom. Comment RENAME and I will send it to you.
Sources: e& annual results FY2021 to FY2025; Brand Finance Global 500 and Telecoms reports, 2019 to 2026; e& filing to the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, 6 October 2026; The National; Telecoms.com; Ad Age; The Branding Journal. Full source list in the case study.