It is a name change as a final point to a restructuring that began two years ago. The private Ephad group Orpea becomes Emeis for “mark a new stage in its refoundation”, announced its general director Laurent Guillot on Wednesday March 20. “The Orpea brand was very damaged, it had become synonymous with scandals, it was important to change its name“, declared to AFP the director of the giant of retirement homes, private clinics and home help services which employs 28,000 people in France.
To understand the current situation we have to go back to January 2022, the date on which the journalist Victor Castanet published “Les Fossoyeurs”. An investigative book denouncing the mistreatment of residents as well as the working conditions in Orpea nursing homes. Rationing of diapers, food, staff exhaustion, misuse of public funds… the list is long and is pushing hundreds of families to sue the group. The descent into hell is such that in one year, Orpea’s stock lost 90% of its value on the stock market.
“A new era”
Heavily in debt, the group was saved from bankruptcy by Caisse des Dépôts (of which Novethic is a subsidiary) armed arm of the State, which, with a consortium, took control in December 2023. Financial restructuring, change of shareholders, the group has also reestablished social dialogue and signed a social agreement last summer providing for measures in favor of employees, a first in 15 years. It has also just revealed its purpose “Together, let us be the life force of the most fragile” and should adopt the status of a mission-driven company next year.
All that was missing was the name change to turn the page. “A name change following a scandal like this allows the company to enter a new era, to embody its new strategy“, explains to Novethic Nina Derai, president of the Nomen agency, specializing in naming. “Emeis – which means “we” in ancient Greek – well represents the refoundation project that we launched in November 2022: a collective project with our 76,000 employees, with our patients, our residents and all healthcare stakeholders.“, agrees Laurent Guillot. Emeis, which the group writes entirely in lowercase, also has a new logo, hands symbolizing the care professions.
A double-edged strategy
Orpea is not the first company to change its name to erase a scandal. But this strategy can be double-edged, warns Pierre-Louis Desprez, associate CEO of Kaos Consulting, an innovation consulting firm. “Words are not guilty. We must not place the blame on them inconsiderately, this can be counterproductive“, he explains. “If you do not change the substance, you expose yourself to easy criticism such as “They changed their name but, basically, nothing has changed”.
The other question is that of notoriety. The group was created in 1989, more than 30 years ago. On the one hand, the advantage “is to wipe the slate clean on digital, on search engines, of a past which can be difficult“, advances Nina Derai. The other, “when you change the name of a brand, you erase 30 years of notoriety, you erase historical value“, tempers Pierre-Louis Desprez.
This “naming” strategy has been used many times throughout crises. Areva renamed itself Orano in 2018 following the Uramin scandal. In a different context, Monsanto, considered “the worst company in the world” was bought in 2018 by Bayer, which chose to erase the name of the American company. More recently Twitter was renamed X by Elon Musk to mark his change in strategy. Facebook became Meta a few months following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.