June 24, 1994

Federal Express announced its new identity as FedEx with a freshly painted MD-11 that had been hidden in a hangar for 2 days. There's an excellent article about the process and the decision on Visual.com: Why Federal Express Became FedEx


Here's an excerpt:

"Its research showed the existing identity had two great strengths: the strong brand equity of Federal Express (and its popular verb form FedEx) both closely identified with speed, reliability, innovation and customer service, and the power of its signature colors purple and orange to communicate urgency and leadership. Research surveys also uncovered problems with the word federal. In 1973, the word had given the company immediate equity, an official alternative to the post office, but today it was more often associated with being bureaucratic and slow. In Latin American countries, it conjured images of the federales, and in some other parts of the world, people had trouble pronouncing Federal Express.

Based on its worldwide focus group research, Landor recommended that the company shorten its brand name to "FedEx" and adopt the tagline "The World On Time" to sum up its key message -- global scope, accessibility, speed, reliability -- in four succinct words. Federal Express was retained as the official corporate name. "


Customers had already been shortening the name to FedEx, so the brand name choice was natural.



The next name change came in 1998 when FedEx acquired RPS, Caliber System, Inc., Viking Freight, Caliber Logistics, Caliber Technology, and Roberts Express. It was at this time the company reorganized into a parent corporation (FDX Corp) and the subsidiaries. What had been Federal Express and then FedEx became FedEx Express, a subsidiary of FDX Corp. Other subsidiaries included FedEx Ground and FedEx Custom Critical.

Of course, we've added more subsidiaries since then, most notably FedEx Kinkos. In 2000 FDX Corp changed its name to FedEx Corporation.




.