voluntary castration
Sometimes it baffles me when corporations don't understand the value of cultural symbols that parts of their brands have become.
The latest example of this is ConocoPhillips' decision to castrate the Union 76 corporate image. The familiar orange balls that I remember since childhood glowing like a beacon above their filling stations are going away. Many have already been replaced by a typical tombstone slab style sign with, oddly enough, a dark red ball instead of the legendary orange. Its necessary in order to "co-brand" the ConocoPhillips logo on their signage, the corporate experts say.
There is a group fighting the removal - whether they will ever have any effect, its hard to say. You can find them at savethe76ball.com.