Rebranding should include cloverleaf

To the Editor: John Talbott's September 2004 Letter to the Editor in support of reviving ASME's venerable 124-year-old cloverleaf logo strikes a sympathetic note with me.

ASME is in the midst of one of the most monumental strategic planning and implementation events of its 124 years of existence: the Continuity & Change initiative. Much good will come from this initiative in dealing with many of ASME's modern-day challenges: retention of younger members, income diversification and growth, Web-based knowledge transfer and communications, to name a few. The last thing anyone wants to do is possibly derail the much-needed change part of the initiative by failing to recognize those items and issues that clearly need to remain on the continuity side of the ledger.

I believe a serious and most unfortunate mistake was made at the September 2003 meeting of the Board of Governors when the marketing consultants persuaded the leadership to replace our 124-year-old cloverleaf emblem with a silly imitation of a Nike, Hyatt-like swoosh, and to deep-six our very name, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and replace it with a deliberately undefined four-letter acronym: ASME.

We are a venerable, globally respected institution dedicated to knowledge transfer, fellowship and professionalism. We should not be inappropriately "rebranding" ourselves in imitation of for-profit corporations like IBM, Exxon, etc.

The finalization of these two resolutions will not take place until June 2005. The BOG did vote at the same September 2003 meeting to retain the Constitutionally protected cloverleaf emblem for use in "ASME products and services as appropriate."

— Paul J. Torpey
President, 1994–95

 

Editor's Note: The Board of Governors (BOG) recommended that ASME's 125th Anniversary, in 2005, and the Continuity and Change initiative be the catalysts to relaunch the ASME brand. At its Sept. 13, 2003, meeting, the BOG voted "to approve the plan for transition of the ASME anniversary logo to the Society's permanent logo beginning in June 2005." It also voted "to retain the cloverleaf as the emblem in ASME products and services as appropriate."

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