Nanjing Change The Meaning of MG?
14 January 2007
2 Comments
When MG was originally conceived by its owners, the acronym MG stood for Morris Garages, however, since being bought by Nanjing the management of Nanjing have decided to change the meaning of MG to mean ‘Modern Gentlemen’ Some people seem a little upset about it, others don’t seem to care, seeing as the MG badge will always be the traditional MG badge as pictured.
Seeing as Nanjing is currently look for a marketing agency in Europe to help them relaunch the MG in the EU in 2007, we hope that they don’t use the ‘Modern Gentlemen’ tag line. They would most certainly alienate all potential female customers!
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1. It’s a myth that MG stood for “Morris Garages”. It never stood for anything. So “Modern Gentleman” is as valid an interpretation of those letters as anything else.
2. This OLD news. NAC-MG were using “Modern Gentleman” as far back as their first trade show back in ‘06.
Mr. Brum Brum – Have you commented before? You could always register
The Wikipedia entry for MG says
‘MG got its name from “Morris Garages”, a dealer of Morris cars in Oxford which began producing its own customized versions to the designs of Cecil Kimber who had joined the company as its Sales Manager in 1921 and was promoted to General Manager in 1922.’
You are right, it is not new news – the name change was published by The Telegraph in June 06. Mr Zhang Xin (presumably a Nanjing MG employee) was quoted as saying
“We want Chinese consumers to know this brand as ‘Modern Gentleman’,” he said. “To see that this brand represents grace and style.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/18/wrover18.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/06/18/ixnews.html
The main reason this was posted on CCT is because there are two pieces of news floating around right now
1) the remergence of the MG acronym change story (Check Google news for Nanjing Modern Gentlemen)
2) the fact that Nanjing are looking for a marketing agency, which hasn’t been reported by any auto related website yet
I thought the two would tie together nicely as one story.