Pardot rename announced by Salesforce

2022-04-13: Salesforce has made what I believe is a branding mistake. Today, April 13, 2022, they officially renamed Pardot to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement.

Not to be unavoidably confused with Marketing Cloud or Engage, which are separate products. Or Engagement Program, which is a feature of Pardot. Those who know Pardot well know how well (not) Pardot engages with accounts. In case our sarcasm doesn’t come through in this post, accounts are read-only in Pardot, and only if there’s a prospect related to an account does an account even show up in Pardot.

Since most people agree that Pardot is a B2B marketing platform, Salesforce should put B2B in the name somehow rather than the word account.

It is reminiscent of the naming issue for Quip, formerly named Salesforce Anywhere, formerly named Quip. It was renamed by Salesforce when they acquired it, then renamed again by Salesforce back to the original name since everyone still referred to it as Quip, which was a better name to begin with in the first place!

Maybe if we’re lucky, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement will follow suit and become ‘Pardot, formerly named Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, formerly named Pardot’.

Good luck to us proud few formerly known as Pardot Consultants (5 syllables), now Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Consultants (12 syllables). Or, worse yet, we’re a Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Consulting Agency. Try putting that on your business card or in your LinkedIn title. Even though I don’t really know Marketing Cloud in its original sense (Marketing Cloud as the world knows it, a.k.a. ExactTarget), I’m now a Marketing Cloud Consultant.

Good luck to Pardot users as they try to remember the new name and socialize it internally.

Good luck to Salesforce reps trying to sell this under the new name without it being confused with the other Marketing Cloud.

And good luck to recruiters trying to staff for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement specialists, hmmm, Pardot specialists.

Pardot rename update 2022-04-27: In the real world there are many permutations of the new name going about and it’s only been two weeks since the name change as of this writing. We’re already starting to see the inevitability of people calling it “Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot)”, “Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (powered by Pardot)”, “MCAE” (phonetically pronounced mckay). Most people still just call it Pardot. Period.

Sad. 😞

So far I haven’t heard anyone on the internet or elsewhere say it’s a good move.

The remaining question is how long will it be before Salesforce realizes their branding mistake and renames Pardot once again? Three months? Six months? Nine months? A full year? Never? If never, is it because Salesforce at that point would still think they did the right thing with the rename, or would it be because Salesforce is too obstinate to realize and correct their mistake? Most people think Salesforce will change the Pardot name once again within 6 months.

Time will tell. For a long time from now we expect we’ll still be calling it Pardot.

Long live Pardot.

~Jeff