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The co-branding honeymoon is over. Last week, FedEx officially announced it is dropping the Kinko’s brand from its retail stores.
The new name for FedEx Kinko’s will be FedEx Office. Apparently, that the Kinko’s name lost its usefulness.
It seems like “Kinko’s” became a generic term for any corner copy shop. Whether the copy shop down the street was actually a Kinko’s or Joe’s copy shop, everyone said, “We need lots of copies fast. Call Kinko’s.” Unlike brand names like Kleenex and Band-Aid, it appears the generic Kinko’s term has met its demise.
I can certainly understand FedEx’s decision to drop the Kinko’s name, and it makes complete sense from a branding perspective. However, I can’t help but miss Kinko’s a bit already.
Of course, Kinko’s was always overpriced, so I’m sure I’ll get over my nostalgic moment quickly.
Image: Flickr
I think FedEx is going to live to regret the name change. From what I understand, the purchase price of Kinko’s was already too steep. I passed up a location the other day because I didn’t understand that my old Kinko’s, which had been switched to FedEx Office, not just plain FedEx. They lost my money because they haven’t spent enough time or effort on the co-branding switch. they have to be losing money on this right now and it’s their fault, not the old brand. It’s been forever since Kinko’s was a catchall word for crappy copying. That honor has long since been passed on to Staples.
1390 days ago
[...] to the FedEx font, I think Kinko’s is going to fade away and disappear. Lo and behold, it’s now official. I saw it coming, er, [...]
Susan, I agree that Kinko’s has become the generic term for “copy place.” In Scott’s part of the country it may not be true, but in Texas we *do* say Kinko’s in place of copy shop the same way we say “Coke” for anything including Dr. Pepper.
That said, I don’t think this rebranding effort to ditch the Kinko’s name will do much because (1) we are already conditioned to the co-brand and (2) expect FedEx/Kinko’s to be a copy shop. Because of our expectations, it doesn’t matter what you call it at this point because we’ll still call it a Kinko’s because it’s a copy shop.
I feel pretty strongly that this is Fed Ex’s marketing department looking for a reason to revamp, get free exposure by blogs talking about the rebrand and get customers to take a second look when they dump the other brand. No matter though, it’ll always be a Kinko’s in my book. :)
1420 days ago
[...] buddy Susan G of Brandcurve notes how Kinko’s had become a sort of generic term for any local copy shop (in the same way that Kleenex, Coke, Jeep, etc. are [...]
I didn’t know that Kinko’s had become a catchall term for any place that does copying; it’s like some places in the country where they call any carbonated softdrink “Coke”.