Does the company name Blue Yonder give you any idea what this company does? What about the tagline “Fulfill your potential?”

Blue Yonder is spending millions of dollars on TV advertising to explain what it does, but I’m still confused. How about you? Check out this ad in a warehouse setting.

Since the professional golf tour restarted, Blue Yonder has run ads featuring star Jon Rahm and his caddy. As Rahm makes a long, difficult putt in one of two of his ads, the caddy talks a million miles a minute about all the capabilities of Blue Yonder.

I’ve been in the B2B software business for more than 30 years. I’ve worked for or consulted with companies in markets from accounting/ERP to data security to CPM to BI but had no idea what Blue Yonder does even after watching so many Blue Yonder TV ads I can’t count them all.

Is Blue Yonder a startup?

My impression was that Blue Yonder is a startup in the B2B space. Only after I did a Google search did I discover that instead of being a startup, Blue Yonder is an established company – 35 years old with 5,300 employees – and one I was familiar with until it changed its name, using the name of a company it had acquired.

Why did JDA Software abandon a well-known and respected name for a name that requires millions of dollars to explain?

“The name change is part of a re-branding initiative to better align the Company’s name with its cloud transformation and product roadmap, embracing a future full of endless innovation, continuous improvement and outstanding customer experience,” according to a February 11, 2020 press release. “The rebrand comes with a new tagline “Fulfill Your Potential™” which reflects the Company’s mission to empower every organization and person on the planet to fulfill their potential.”

Talk about an ambitious mission! It doesn’t seem practical or believable.

 Clarifying Blue Yonder’s mission

“Our new brand fully embodies who we are now, a united company with one simple goal: to provide endless innovation and continuous improvement that fully allows our associates, customers and partners to fulfill their potential,” said Blue Yonder chief marketing officer Kevin Iaquinto.

While Iaquinto helps narrow “fulfill your potential” to a more realistic scope, in the same press release, here’s the “About” paragraph that reiterates the most outlandish claims I’ve ever encountered in B2B software:

“Blue Yonder (formerly JDA Software, Inc.) provides seamless, friction-free commerce, empowering every organization and person on the planet to fulfill their potential. Blue Yonder’s machine learning-driven digital fulfillment platform enables clients to deliver to their customers when, how and where they want it. Applying over 35 years of domain expertise, contextual intelligence and data science, Blue Yonder is helping more than 3,300 of the world’s leading manufacturers, retailers and logistics companies create more autonomous, sustainable and profitable operations.”

I don’t know about you, but the above paragraph doesn’t do a lot to help me know what Blue Yonder does. Had I not done my research, I’d still be wondering what Blue Yonder does.

Folks at Blue Yonder might argue that its product offering can do so much that it’s hard to describe succinctly. I argue that if they can’t do it, their product offering won’t fulfill its full potential.

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