How Office Max Ignored Symantec’s Decision to Change VeriSign Checkmark to Norton

Have you ever seen a retail giant give a computer software giant the ‘finger’?

That’s pretty much the message sent from the folks at Office Max to Symantec after they made the decision in August of this year to place the VeriSign Checkmark on their company shopping cart; providing consumers with increased confidence in knowing that the website they are using is safe and secure. Now how does this mean that Office Max is telling Symantec to screw off you ask? Well, let me fill you in on the back-story. 

Back in April of 2012, Symantec (who is the parent company of both the Norton and VeriSign brands of SSL Certificate software and Internet Security products) made the decision to completely re-brand their highly trustworthy VeriSign Checkmark product line and replace it with the Norton Secured Seal of approval. The only problem is that more consumers across the globe recognize VeriSign and its Checkmark as the most reliable certificate available for internet shopping and security. 

So essentially, they replaced a top-shelf product with something that you find in a bar’s well – cheap and tastes really bad in the mouths of computer users. 

When Symantec made this decision, overnight thousands of hardcore computer online users and shoppers were furious. No longer could they trust any of the Symantec brands simply because of Symantec’s decision to deceive the public by replacing a great seal with the Norton Seal. This deceived the public because now, anytime a consumer visits a website that displays the Norton Secured Seal, they must assume that the inferior Norton Product is attempting to protect that particular website – even if it’s displayed VeriSign in the past. 

But, here is the cool part about what Office Max did in August. They realized that Symantec’s decision to replace the VeriSign Checkmark with the Norton Secured Seal truly impacted their number one reason of being in business – online product sales. According to the company’s 2012 Quarter 2 Financial reports, Office Max has seen a significant decrease in online product sales, generating only $1,602,399 in sales compared to 2011 Q-2 sales of $1,647,616. Since consumer spending across the board was up just a taste from last year, their conclusion was that this must be a result of other consumer confidence issues. 

They were right. It was most likely due to that lame Norton Secured Seal being placed on their website and chasing some business away. 

So in August 2012, Office Max placed the VeriSign Checkmark back on their website. They had the Norton Secured Seal replaced with the VeriSign Checkmark as a matter of choice to convince their consumers that their website is truly protected by VeriSign software. 

How do you think this makes Symantec look now? It makes them look less trustworthy than before. If their decision to place the Norton Secured Seal to replace VeriSign was a brilliant idea, why now are retailers making the choice themselves to place the VeriSign Checkmark back on their websites?

Maybe because they know that Symantec’s decision cost them money.