This post is one in a series on prominent company nicknames. See all 25, and share your thoughts and memories about Big Blue below in the comments.

Although there shall probably always remain unanswered speculation as to exactly how the nickname came to be, most people in business or industry today know, when you mention Big Blue, you're talking about IBM, International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM). It's a name that invokes a respect of power, much in the same way that motorists pull aside for a fire engine or stop for a moving train. As reflected in the three letter company logo, Big Blue is solid and steady, yet quite on the move.

People have attributed the company nickname to a past company dress code, when employees were required to wear white shirts and most of them wore blue suits. That theory seems a bit shallow to me. Besides, that policy was done away with in the 1990s by CEO, Lou Gerstner. Since that time, I haven't noticed anyone calling IBM, Big Business Casual.

A second theory about the company moniker follows a more logical theme. It relies on the fact that IBM uses blue for its company logo and equipment, blue being a color that denotes strength. People also naturally associate blue with largeness, similar to the sky, the oceans, and even outer space. When used in context, people just know what big company you're talking about when you use the name. For instance, if I asked my step-mom; "How are you and Big Blue doing?" she'd immediately know I was referring to one of her independent engineering contracts with IBM.

Continue reading Company nicknames: IBM, Big Blue is true blue

Company nicknames: IBM, Big Blue is true blue originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

FT.com reports that newly appointed Merrill Lynch & Co. (NYSE: MER) CEO, John Thain, wants to remake Merrill in Goldman Sachs Group's (NYSE: GS) image. In particular, Thain wants different parts of Merrill to work more effectively as a team.

The irony of this idea is high. That's because Thain's predecessor, Stanley O'Neal hammered his subordinates every quarter as Goldman outperformed Merrill. O'Neal led a big increase in Merrill taking on more trading risk because he thought that was what led Goldman to do so well. It was this Goldman envy that ultimately led to O'Neal's downfall.

Now Merrill's board has someone who worked at Goldman -- Thain spent most of his Wall Street career in the Goldman system, rising to become co-president before leaving in 2003 -- to try again to remake Merrill in Goldman's image. In my book, Value Leadership, I compared the Goldman and Merrill cultures and concluded that Merrill has a long history -- dating back at least to 1995 -- of encouraging internal competition based on a star system that creates massive amounts of turnover at executive levels.

I predict that Thain will face enormous resistance when he tries to impose the Goldman system of teamwork onto the Merrill culture. If he succeeds, he deserves enormous admiration.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

Can Thain remake Merrill in Goldman's image? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) is "finally getting back to business" after it was forced to restate four years worth of financials because of aggressive accounting that was done, in some cases at the request of "senior executives," to meet financial targets.

Shares are up since the restatement. With the exception of the always-vigilant Herb Greenberg, Dell's restatement has gotten very little coverage in the financial press. The dollar amount of the restatement can be quantified easily -- $150 million. That's less than 2.5% of the company's current market cap. So this is hardly Enron.

But the larger point -- and one that seems to be getting little attention -- is what this matter says about the corporate culture at Dell, and the company's internal controls. This fraud -- "adjustments to various reserve and accrued liability accounts ... so that quarterly performance objectives could be met" is fraud -- went on for four years.

Hopefully Dell's board and management are taking the steps to improve the company's corporate culture to one of integrity. That's the real issue here, and it's a vital part of "getting back to business."

Dell (DELL) finally getting back to business? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 25 Aug 2007 12:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A piece in Monday's New York Times looks at some of the unique ways that Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is looking to attract talent, starting with candidates as young as college freshmen. What are some of their strategies? Puzzles, Legos, video games, cocktail parties, pizza parties, treasure hunts, and programming contests. These are intended to be low-pressure opportunities for job seekers to get to know Google's corporate culture.

Google's recruiting strategy appears to be working, as the company recently surpassed McKinsey as the most desirable employer of MBA's.

What's so great here is that Google appears to be succeeding in maintaining its own slightly off-kilter corporate culture in spite of rapid growth. And it's that culture that, in part, has allowed Google to prosper. As companies like Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) have learned, rapid growth can turn a company with a strong, independent culture into a bureaucracy reminiscent of Teldar Paper, for all of you fans of the movie Wall Street.

Google's emphasis on its people should help it avoid that fate, and stockholders will be huge beneficiaries if it can.

Google looks for new ways to recruit talent originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 29 May 2007 17:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and watch out for more Battle of the Brands posts.

If you like ice cream, you're probably already in one camp or the other. Few people claim to love Ben & Jerry's peacenik-y, tied-up-and-twisted flavors equally as well as the upper-crust uber-richness of Haagen-Dazs' highly-crafted premium varieties.

Oddly, though both have such strong brand identity and have created corporate cultures that seem pure and fiercely independent, both are tiny units of much larger (and unsexy) food companies. Ben & Jerry's was acquired by Unilever plc (ADR) (NYSE: UL) in 2000, while Haagen-Dazs was acquired by Pillsbury in 1983, now a unit of the quite pedantic General Mills, Inc. (NYSE: GIS).

How is it that two ice cream companies that share so many similarities -- the same size and shape package, the same commitment to quality of ingredients, the same fierce attention to (and careful culling of) flavor rosters, the same expectations (that you'll eat a good portion of the pint in one sitting, probably alone), the same prices -- be so different? To an outsider who understood nothing of the singular pleasure of dipping a spoon into a fresh-from-the-freezer pint of a favorite flavor, well, you'd think the brands were interchangeable; that a given consumer would choose one over the other based only on the weekly specials at one's neighborhood grocery store. Au contraire, or as they say in Vermont, no way man.

Continue reading Haagen-Dazs vs. Ben & Jerry's: Battle of the Brands

Haagen-Dazs vs. Ben & Jerry's: Battle of the Brands originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 13 Apr 2007 11:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.