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Marketing history is littered with examples of established brands making dad-at-the-disco-style pivots in order to embrace 'the youth'. Ollie Edwards applauds Aberdeen Asset Management for its creative about-turn.

Living embodiments of Steve Buscemi's 'How do you do, fellow kids?' meme guy.

But king among them all is Aberdeen Asset Management's 2021 decision to rebrand itself as... Abrdn. This followed a prevailing trend of vowel-dropping that was, at the time, being adopted by pop stars, content creators (then known as influencers) and online reply guys. But a fund manager... Srsly?

The move, pioneered by the well-respected branding experts Wolff Olins, backfired spectacularly, prompting one of the fund's top execs to accuse the world-at-large of 'corporate bullying'. This in turn provoked a fresh round of derision which led to the greatest front page in the history of City AM.

And last week, the firm finally cut its losses and reversed the name change.

But with one subtle twist. A marked lack of capitalisation on its new 'aberdeen' branding.

Given that in recent weeks the commentariat has complained of 'the death of the capital letter' at the hands of Gen-Z, one has to wonder if this omission was deliberate. And if so whether the firm is at risk of, once again, making a decision with its branding which will look horribly out-of-date in just a few short years.

Time will tell. And aberdeen's customers will be the ultimate arbiter.

For now, let us simply applaud the brand's maturity in accepting its error and reverting (almost) to the original.