4. The WWF
In late 2001 the unthinkable happened to Vince McMahon - the WWF was put of business by a legal ruling. It was in name only, but it was a hurtful defeat for McMahon to witness his family business name forcibly killed. The ruling was a result of a High Court case that favored the World Wildlife Fund argument that the World Wrestling Federation was damaging the charity name of the WWF. Vince could have appealed, but instead decided in 2002 to re brand WWF as WWE. The "Get the F out" campaign started on television, and World Wrestling Entertainment was born. Commenting on the monumental change, Linda McMahon stated "We will utilize this opportunity to position ourselves emphasizing the entertainment aspect of our company, and, at the same time, allay the concerns of the Fund." History would have to be reworked. Everything started to be called "WWE", even historical events. The WWF Attitude era started to be called the WWE Attitude era in company retrospectives. More painstakingly, video editors for compilation DVDs had to work through matches to remove the WWF logo. Even small versions of the WWF logo featured on turnbuckles had to be blurred out on WWE DVD releases. The rewriting of history has worked. There are a generation of kids now who have never heard of the WWF. Meanwhile, the World Wildlife Fund is arguably much less of a strong brand since losing its WWF namesake.