Emerdata: A Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet
May 3, 2018
In August 2017, Emerdata came into being. CarolineO tweeted:
Say bye to Cambridge Analytica and hello to Emerdata, the data firm established in August by SCL/Cambridge Analytica executives. Rebekah Mercer and her sister are directors of Emerdata. Emerdata shares an address with Cambridge Analytica’s UK office.
Tweets are “real” news when messages originate with @RVAwonk.
The point is that Cambridge Analytica seems to have begun the process of disappearing: Bankruptcy in the US and shuttered offices.
The Register, a UK online publication, reported:
Cambridge Analytica dismantled for good? Nope: It just changed its name to Emerdata.
The death of a brand triggered a recollection from a novelist who was okay with a different identity. Here’s the quote:
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” —George Eliot
George Eliot was not a cricket playing, boater wearing, gad fly. Nope, George was Mary Anne Evans. She / he wrote some darned exciting novels; for example, that page turner Mill on the Floss and my fave Daniel Derona.
The idea was that anyone who knew Mary Anne would never realize she was really a he.
Is there a lesson for Cambridge Analytica? Sorry, I meant Emerdata? No one will ever know that Facebook fan boy and customer of a certain Cambridge lecturer were one and the same.
I am completely fooled. I assume you are too.
MBA speak labels the move “repositioning” or “rebranding.” I go with the moniker a George Eliot move.
As George / Mary observed:
Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness.
Nothing like deeds.
Stephen E Arnold, May 3, 2018
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