Branding Strategy Insider

A Rebranding Success from the Deep

First, a sincere apology for my last blog post. The OLOF spectacles that rendered all advertising invisible and Prail, the company behind the specs, were both anagrams and part of a really bad April Fool's prank. I promise no more joke’s for a long time. That's an important commitment, because today’s post might also seem a bit foolish at first sight, but I can assure you, this one is for real.

On Monday, UK grocer Sainsbury's rebranded a fish - the pollack, to be precise. It seems that despite pollack being much more plentiful, environmentally sound and cheaper than cod or haddock, the supermarket's research has revealed that the fish's unattractive name and reputation as only good enough for the cat have proven too big a perceptual barrier for consumers to overcome.

So this week Sainsbury's has started to promote pollack using the French name for the fish which is - wait for it - colin. No, not Colin as in Firth; Colin as in Powell, which is how the French say it. Not content with the fancy new name, Sainsbury's also hired designer Wayne Hemingway to overhaul the line's packaging with a Jackson Pollock-inspired, multi-coloured theme. Last week, it was boring old pollack; this week, it is a post-modern-packaged, French-accented envirofish.

Usually, at this point, I would evoke the universal, one-word rule of all rebranding strategies: don't. Unless your organisation must change a brand name for legal reasons, stay well away from the dangerous, career-shredding world of rebranding. It looks good on the flip chart at the branding agency, but the post-launch reality is usually a disaster. Customers and employees hate the new name, the company's leader-ship cringe when asked to support it, and the media rips apart the strategy and those idiot marketers behind it.

Identity Before Strategy: Doom for Rebrands

Rebranding efforts are tricky things. Once in a very blue moon they can prove to be the turnaround that the management team was hoping for.

Sports brand Puma, luxury brand Gucci and the gurus at Apple all provide notable examples of great brand revitalizations during the 90’s.

The strategic lessons from these turnarounds do not emanate from what these brands did, but rather what they did not do.

First, they did not change their names or logos.
Second, they did not announce that they were about to save, reposition or do anything particularly radical to their brand.
Third, they were patient; each brand took a decade or more to turn around.
Fourth, they did it in-house without depending on identity consultants to assist them.
Fifth, they did not recruit senior thinkers from established consumer marketing companies to replicate branding strategies from fast moving consumer goods (FMCG); they did it their own, brand-specific, way.
Sixth, any changes in ad strategies and spend came years after the initial turnaround had begun.

A great brand strategy does not start with name changes, new logos, multi-million dollar ad campaigns or bold predictions from chief executives.

Successful Brand Repositioning

You follow the same steps and address the same brand design components when repositioning a brand as you do when first designing the brand. But, brand repositioning is more difficult than initially positioning a brand because you must first help the customer “unlearn” the current brand positioning (easier said than done). 

Three actions can aid your success in this process: (1) carefully crafted communication, (2) new products, packaging, etc. that emphasize the new positioning and (3) associations with other brands (co-branding, co-marketing, ingredient branding, strategic alliances, etc.) that reinforce the new brand positioning.

You should not rely upon an advertising agency, a brand consulting company, or your marketing department to craft your corporate or organizational brand’s design. This exercise is so critical to your organization’s success that your organization’s leadership team and its marketing/brand management leaders should develop it, preferably with the help and facilitation of an outside brand-positioning expert.

We have more to share on Repositioning here and Brand Positioning here.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Rebranding A National University

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: Why not change the world?™

As Vice President of the Rensselaer Alumni Association (RAA) board and chairman of its national Alumni Admissions Committee I was a key participant in the endeavor to rebrand Rensselaer. Today I want to share the case study of that effort.

Great Accomplishments, “No Man’s Land” Marketing Position
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, founded in 1824, was the first degree-granting technological university in the English-speaking world. Rensselaer was established "for the purpose of instructing persons, who may choose to apply themselves, in the application of science to the common purposes of life." Since Rensselaer’s founding, its alumni have impacted the world in many significant ways:

•    Inventing television
•    Creating the microprocessor
•    Managing the Apollo project that put the first man on the moon
•    Founding Texas Instruments and creating the first pocket calculator
•    Creating e-mail (including using the @ symbol)
•    Inventing baking powder
•    Inventing the Reach toothbrush
•    Building the Brooklyn Bridge
•    Building the Panama Canal
•    Inventing the Ferris Wheel

Yet, for all its accomplishments, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Rensselaer was not well positioned (to prospective students) compared to its world-renowned rival, MIT, or even to schools such as Cal Tech, UC Berkeley, and Carnegie-Mellon. Many state schools (Purdue, University of Illinois at Urbana, etc.) offered exceptionally strong technical programs at significantly lower costs than private universities such as Rensselaer.

Branding, Acquisition & Transition

It is critical for companies that grow through acquisition to provide the acquired companies with the following tools for brand transition.

If re-branding is a forgone conclusion:

•Acquiring brand positioning (essence, promise, personality, etc.) reviewed with acquired company management and marketing department
     oAcquired company management and marketing department must understand the brand strategy of the acquiring company
•A fairly exhaustive inventory of possible identity applications to be addressed (such as catalogs, brochures, white papers, vehicles, signage, stationery, websites, presentation (PowerPoint) formats, telephone scripts, product, packaging, shipping boxes, trade show booths, etc.)
     oWeb considerations are critical -- URL conventions, combined or separate websites, redirects, applying new identity skin to existing sites, etc.
•Detailed guidelines for new brand identity, preferably including templates for most common applications
•Brand transition plan outline including customer, sales force, distributor and other business partner communication, transition steps and expected timeline
     oFewer steps are usually better. One step, if possible, is the most advantageous
     oAlso outlining anticipated incremental changeover expenses and long-term cost savings, if any
     oRevised selling scripts and sales training are essential
     oTimelines for individual steps will be based upon cost, complexity and importance of change
•Extra seed funds to facilitate a successful re-branding campaign

If re-branding is not a forgone conclusion:

•Brand architecture decision tree/criteria
     oIncluding options for acquired brands (independent stand alone brand, sub-brand, endorsed brand, product name, absorption into another brand)
•Brand identity guidelines/standards
•Recommended research to inform branding decisions (awareness, positive associations and other equity elements for the acquired brand and the acquiring brand within the relevant product/service categories)
•Brand transition plan outline including customer, sales force, distributor and other business partner communication, transition steps and expected timeline
     oFewer steps are usually better, one step if possible
     oAlso outlining anticipated incremental changeover expenses and long-term cost savings, if any
     oRevised selling scripts and sales training are essential
•Extra seed funds to facilitate a successful re-branding campaign

In either situation (re-branding as a forgone conclusion or not), the marketing department of the acquiring company must meet with the marketing department of the acquired company to make sure that there is a good understanding of the strategy, to identify possible issues and to develop a practical, cost-effective transition plan.

Brand Repositioning and Organizational Reinvention

We have been working with a number of organizations lately whose brand repositioning efforts involve nothing less than organizational transformation including business model and culture change.

Take libraries as an example. In most people’s minds, libraries are synonymous with books. However, for those of us who can afford it, Amazon.com is a much more convenient source of books, with its 24/7 availability, advanced search and browse capabilities, extensive product reviews and very quick shipping.

One of the underlying benefits of books is information. How much easier is it today to search for information online using one of many search engines rather than going to the local library? And whether you are looking for information or just the pure pleasure of reading, think about the advantages of going to a Barnes & Noble store with its overstuffed chairs, café, book readings and signings, community rooms, etc.

Where then does the modern library fit into people’s need fulfillment? I believe libraries need to redefine themselves from ‘book archives’ to ‘community places’ – places for the acquisition of information, sharing of ideas, exposure to different cultures and enrichment of life in general. Obviously, this has huge implications for brand position, competitive set, culture, business model, sources of income and the physical environment. I believe that this example demonstrates that increasingly brand repositioning is accompanied by culture and business model change requiring the interdisciplinary efforts of marketing, business strategy and human resource professionals at a minimum.

Exploring Radical Brand Makeovers

Conventional brand repositioning wisdom is to alter the brand’s position incrementally from the established position, playing off of current assumptions about the brand.  It is usually a very tricky and subtle exercise that requires deep customer insight.  And yet, some brands have radically altered their brand’s meanings, so much so that the ‘before’ and ‘after’ target audiences are completely different.  Following are two examples of this.

As a baby boomer, I remember Abercrombie & Fitch.  It was a very traditional, outdoorsy, hunt club oriented brand.  It felt a little bit like L.L. Bean or Orvis.  Today, it is a completely different brand.  It is hot and sexy and targets teens.  In fact, not too long ago it was in the news for the controversy around its featuring semi-nude models at the entrances to its mall stores.  At one time Reebok was known as an athletic shoe brand targeted at young women and aerobics.  Today, it is successfully re-targeted at the inner city hip-hop generation.

How do some brands get away with such a radical transformation of target audiences and brand meanings while others struggle to appeal to different markets?  For instance, McDonalds was not successful with its adult-oriented Arch Deluxe menu item and Volvo has had limited success with its performance (versus safety) based models.

I believe that brands that are successful with these radical transformations are successful for a number of reasons:

•They are forced to change direction due to their brand’s declining core markets.

•They completely reposition the brand.  They do not try to extend just portions of the brand into new market segments.  There are no stretched, inconsistent or multiple brand meanings.  The meaning is radically and permanently altered.

•They ‘bet the future of the brand’ on the repositioning.  That is, they carefully plan, invest heavily in and flawlessly execute the new position.

•The marketing strategies and tactics completely change to address the new target audiences.

Re-Brands need every ego on board

As I boarded the plane at Heathrow six years ago, I felt a cold chill of nervousness. I was on my way to the global headquarters of one of the world's biggest companies. It had hired me as their lone brand consultant for a major corporate re-branding project.

I would report directly to a man recently hired from an FMCG company to head the re-branding. We spent that first day reviewing his vision.

As the weeks passed and my trips out to company HQ became more frequent, a bold branding plan was developed.

We started with extensive consumer research and then spent weeks analyzing the data. When it came to the positioning stage we kept it very tight and benchmarked everything against our customer insights and our extensive knowledge of competitor perceptions. With the positioning complete we turned our attention to the roll-out of the brand strategy across the organization. On launch day, nine months after our first meeting, my client and I stood shoulder to shoulder and proudly announced the new corporate brand strategy.

And then ... nothing happened.

Top Reasons to Reposition a Brand

Brand repositioning is necessary when one or more of the following conditions exist:

• Your brand has a bad, confusing or nonexistent image.


• The primary benefit your brand "owns" has evolved from a differentiating benefit to a cost-of-entry benefit.


• Your organization is significantly altering its strategic direction.


• Your organization is entering new businesses and the current positioning is no longer appropriate.


• A new competitor with a superior value proposition enters your industry.


• Competition has usurped your brand's position or rendered it ineffectual.


• Your organization has acquired a very powerful proprietary advantage that must be worked into the brand positioning.


• Corporate culture renewal dictates at least a revision of the brand personality


• You are broadening your brand to appeal to additional consumers or consumer need segments for whom the current brand positioning won't work.  (This should be a "red flag."  This action could dilute the brand's meaning, make the brand less appealing to current customers or even alienate current customers.)