Stop Calling It the BoM, It’s ‘The Bureau’ Now

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has declared that it no longer wants to be referred to as the BoM (pronounced “Bom”), so we’re gonna get it all out of our system in this article. Described by The Guardian as a “BoMshell” (bravo to The Guardian for that one), the announcement comes amid massive flooding in southeast Australia. As good a time as ever to declare that a widely common pronunciation of your name is wrong and issue a press release about it.

The Bureau of Meteorology no longer wants to be called "the BoM" pic.twitter.com/C7dhN2e51L

— @MartySilk (@MartySilkHack) October 17, 2022

The change is being implemented, according to The Bureau, as a way for people to recognise the legitimacy of Australia’s weather monitoring government department. To this end, yeah, it makes total sense to want to change your accepted name to one that is instantly understandable to all, although I’ve had no trouble referring to The Bureau as the “BoM” in most settings. The BoM has done away with confusing terminology before, too. “The Bureau of Meteorology asks that media outlets update editorial style to ensure references to the organisation are by its full name, the Bureau of Meteorology or the Bureau for short, and not BoM or the Weather Bureau,” the Bureau wrote in the press release above. By extension, the Bureau is changing its Twitter tags. @BOM_au will become @TheBureau_Au, @BOM_NSW will become @TheBureau_nsw, @BOM_ACT will become @TheBureau_act and so on. It doesn’t appear that the Bureau’s Facebook or Instagram accounts have the same problem. Not long after the announcement, though, some Twitter users created new accounts and changed their handles to try and swoop in before The Bureau could perform its handle changes. @TheBureau_Au, however, has now been suspended. It’s likely that the account was removed under Twitter’s misleading and deceptive identities policy (as the handle was changed shortly after the announcement), but we’ve reached out to Twitter for comment. It’s all a bit botched.

at least four of the weather bureau's new twitter handles have now been snapped up by non-weather bureau entities https://t.co/x7DOmjn2bi

— casey briggs (@CaseyBriggs) October 18, 2022

Saturday Paper’s Rick Morton reported that The Bureau has been planning on this rebrand for a year now, with the contract for the rebrand costing almost $70,000.

Here’s the contract, almost $70,000 for a PR firm called The C Word from September last year to help with rebranding the Bureau of Meteorology. Wonder what the advice was? Thanks to @CamDimsey for ferreting this out. https://t.co/r9Iwnqb6TQ

— Rick Morton (@SquigglyRick) October 18, 2022

It’s likely that The Bureau will change the name of its weather app too. So get the BoM out of your system. It’s The Bureau now. And they want to be taken more seriously.

The post Stop Calling It the BoM, It’s ‘The Bureau’ Now appeared first on Gizmodo Australia.