Brand Confusion with Trenitalia’s Website

Marketing professionals know that brands are worth big money. A brand name and logo serve as an instant shorthand to convey a mental image of a product or service. Companies invest extensively when developing and launching a new brand name. Once launched, brand names are fiercely protected.

Looking for Trenitalia?

It was thus with surprise that I noticed several weeks ago traffic to Trenitalia being redirected to the parent group’s website which carries the old retail name, Ferrovie dello Stato.

Looking for this?

This is what you’ll get.

Stranger yet, timetable queries made from the Ferrovie dello Stato home page produced results using the orario.trenitalia.com subdomain with the Trenitalia name and graphics. Upon closer inspection, I noticed the redirect was accomplished with a simple client side meta refresh tag – rather than the preferred server side method to set a permanent 301 or temporary 302 http redirect status.

Trenitalia, I love you dearly when you get me to my destination on time; but please get your web strategy straightened out!

Checking back today, I noticed the strange redirect is still in place. If the redirect is an oversight, no one seems to have noticed.

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