Facebook Has Become The New Chevy Nova

Remember the Chevrolet Nova, the ubiquitous compact car from the 60s and 70s? Urban legend has it that the higher ups at GM failed to recognize that “No va”, in Spanish, means “doesn’t go” and that sales in Spanish-speaking countries languished because people did not want to buy a car called the Chevy Doesn’t Go. While that legend has been disproved over time, it does show as a wonderful example of companies not thinking through their branding completely because, face it, false or not, the name led to many, many chuckles and guffaws.

Now let’s talk Facebook. The parent company decided to rename itself. This is not unusual — Google did it years ago and the parent company is now called Alphabet Incorporated. Google, the search engine, is a product owned by Alphabet Incorporated. So Facebook renamed itself Meta and, through similar restructuring, Facebook has become a product owned by Meta.

Now for the tie-in with Chevy. In Hebrew, “meta” means dead. It represents “the conjugation of the feminine form for "dead" in both present and past tenses.” Yes, apparently Facebook is now dead. #FacebookDead.

Here’s the other kicker. Here is Facebook’s Meta’s new logo:

Here is the logo from M-Sense, a migraine app:

Note any similarities?

At this point, I don’t know the trademark registration status of either logo but it appears that Meta’s designed came as a surprise to the German tech company.

Just as was the case with the Cleveland Indians Guardians rebranding, these intellectual property issues are extremely important for businesses. A business must protect its name and logo through registration and be prepared to defend that ownership, if need.