The song in this video is called Cool For Cats. At just over 2 minutes 30 seconds, it’s a taut, quirky pop anthem that was quite popular when I was a lad (although may be considered slightly politically incorrect today).
If you search for the song online, you’ll almost certainly find it credited to Squeeze. But that wasn’t the name of the band when and where I first heard it.
In Australia, the band led by songwriters Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook was known as UK Squeeze, because apparently there was already an Australian band called Squeeze in the late 1970s. Finding any information about them on Google is a little difficult, however, so perhaps the name change was in vain.
Around the same time, while international audiences were enjoying the laugh-a-minute movie Airplane!, Aussies (and people in New Zealand, South Africa, Japan and the Philippines) were watching the same thing, except it carried the title Flying High!
These are not isolated incidents. Along with many other companies, film distributors and record labels have often renamed their product for a different market. Sometimes it’s because it clashes with a local copyright or trademark or because the foreign name is inappropriate (it may be a slang or swear word, for instance.)
Lately, however, there has been a trend to homogenise names. The skincare product known as Oil of Ulan in Australia for decades was renamed Oil of Olay quite a few years ago, presumably to fit in with international manufacturing and marketing demands. Especially in the internet age, it is cheaper to produce something with just one label and one advertising campaign.
In the UK, the American animated TV series Top Cat became Boss Cat to avoid confusion with a local comic character, and there was outcry when Marathon chocolate bars became Snickers and Jif bathroom cleaner became Cif to fall into line with the European name (despite, in my opinion, Jif being a far more fit-for-purpose name).
There’s a list on Wikipedia of names that are different in different markets, including a tweak to the title of The Avengers, the superhero film, to distinguish it from the great 1960s British TV series of the same name.
But does changing the name make a difference? Probably not. Shakespeare’s theory that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet is, I believe, backed up by reliable data insofar as roses have different names in different languages yet remain essentially the same.
