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"Meet the Booba" (Bank Officially Owned By America)


Lumbering Banking Giant "BofA" Name Change In the Offing?

What's in a name? Known to tens of millions of customers simpy as "BofA", the newly enlarged prostate of the banking systeming is said to be considering changing it long-standing acronym along with its ubiquitous red and blue flag logo with the squiggly lines. Marketing executives are surprisingly warming up to the idea of rebranding from "BofA" to "Booba" that is simply short for the truth: Bank Officially Owned By America. A bank spokesman declined to comment but a credible source requesting anonymity said "Even though Booba sounds a little silly at first, preliminary focus groups results indicate it put a more human face on the bank." The now-bloated banking behemoth encountering severe Merrill indigestion however may have come up with the first impactful post-Lehman marketing coup.

This rebranding solution would enable the transformation of B-of-A that must be clumsily articulated in three syllables (as in "B of A") into a longer five letter (B-O-O-B-A) trademark but much easier to pronounce as a two syllable acronym:"Booba". The source commented, "this is a case where more is less! It's really out of the box when you think about it." Citing other really silly sounding but highly successful market campaigns such as Geico's Geckko, the quacking duck for AFLAC and the completely annoying WaMu (the recently siezed Washington Mutual) that sounds more like the post-coital exhortation of a Blitzen the Reindeer, the source said, "we are optimistic that this could be the stroke that turns the tide of the credit crunch. The source continued, "who wouldn't want to pridefully exhort: "I bank with Booba!"

Some critics decried this as an attempt to play off the popularity of two Presidents: William "Bubba" Clinton and the natural asssociation to Obama.

Article originally appeared on Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (http://extraordinarypopulardelusions.net/).
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