Companies bet big on name game; Picking new monikers expensive but worthwhile.(News)

Byline: SEAN CALLAHAN

What's in a name? About $35 million if you're BearingPoint Inc., which spent that much to change its name from KPMG Consulting last month. For Deloitte Consulting, which will officially change its name to Braxton Consulting in January, the process will cost an estimated $70 million. And these companies are spending less than the reported $170 million the former Andersen Consulting spent in changing its name to Accenture in 2001.

It's clear that corporate name changes-and the marketing communications efforts they demand-are a high-stakes game. Even though the number of name changes in the first six months of this year declined about 30% from the first half 2001, they are still occurring with staggering frequency. From January through June of this year, nearly 1,400 U.S. companies were renamed, according to branding consultancy Enterprise IG Inc.

Corporate name changes have slowed since the economic bubble burst in 2000, observed Robert Kahn, exec VP for Enterprise IG. ``What [companies] are doing is taking what they have and …