Question

Topic: Branding

Rebranding Do's And Dont's - Case Study Request

Posted by Anonymous on 2500 Points
Hello Everyone:

I am posting this question with a fair amount of points because I would like to get as much SPECIFIC input as possible.

Situation:

I am working with a client friend who is facing a difficult decision on re-branding his core brand, which is the namesake of the foreign parent. The brand has been promoted in the US with a fair amount of support and promotion but generates relatively low brand name awareness and recognition given this investment. This lack of broad-scale recognition and inferred attributes could possibly be a limiting factor in his ambitious growth plans.

My friend absolutely feels he should execute a re-branding - so that is NOT the issue I am placing before you today.

His issue is execution and rationale. He is getting pressure to execute a comprehensive re-brand in one fell swoop with a very low marketing budget. He (and I) both concur that this could be a disastrous strategy for the brand, which has a fair amount of industry sponsorship and endorsement associated with it (sorry - I need to keep the company and brand confidential).

He needs to create a convincing argument for his fellow senior managers that a successful re-branding campaign requires one of two distinct strategies.

1. INTENSIVE STRATEGY - with a significant expenditure in advertising, promotion, and communications. This strategy will allow the brand to be re-staged in very few incremental steps AND allow him to execute over a relatively short time frame BUT CANNOT be executed without the investment.

2. GRADUAL RESTAGE - with a much lower overall marketing investment. The re-branding can be done with a lower budget but requires a SIGNIFICANT amount of time to execute gradually over several design/communications phases.

REQUEST:

I request your collective input on best/worst practices based on SPECIFIC re-brandings you have been associated with or have SPECIFIC knowledge of.

We need specific information/case studies to build a body of knowledge to support our conviction that, to be successful, one needs either a significant investment over a relatively short time frame OR a longer, staged re-brand with a lower overall communications investment.

Great answers (which will receive more points consideration) will include links to specific articles and/or case studies on this issue that will help create this body of knowledge.

I would also LOVE summaries of specific do's and dont's relative to your personal experience with the executional (time versus money) issues I have framed.

Thank you in advance for your contributions to this question, especially to my long-time colleagues!

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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Mushfique Manzoor on Accepted
  • Posted by ReadCopy on Accepted
    Never underestimatte the power of name or brand within the market.

    https://www.brandchannel.com/features_profile.asp?pr_id=76

    A classic failure here in the Uk was Royal Mails change to "Consignia"
  • Posted by Mushfique Manzoor on Member
    hi Jim

    Pepper Blue answered this reply on similar topic here.

    "Slovak Telecom did it and talks about it here:

    https://www.telecom.sk/En/Default.aspx?CatID=33

    Landor has done brand revitalization and rebranding for many clients globally. More info here:

    https://www.landor.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=cPortfolio.getClientsByProjectT...
    "
    plus, you can check the American Marketing Association at www.marketingpower.com But you have to be a paid member of AMA @USD 195/yr to access various case studies they have on branding (i am just a registered member :-().

    Hope that helps

    cheers!!
  • Posted by Mushfique Manzoor on Accepted
    hi Jim

    adding to my earlier posts, the following is the link to a Case Study of Club Med, France's largest travel and tourism company.

    https://www.atme.org/pubs/members/75_307_1301.cfm

    also the link to the Case Study on rebranding of UK govt's Dept of Culture

    https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/webdav/servlet/XRM?Page/@id=6048&Session/@...

    hope this helps.

    cheers!!
  • Posted by ReadCopy on Member
    Jim, I guess like most of us we have met businesses who see rebranding as just a logo change. Tried to bash that into one or two businesses myself that a simple logo change just isn't enough.
  • Posted by ReadCopy on Member
    Just get your friend to remember that it its simplist form, a brand MUST deliver the promoted promise.

    To deliver that promise takes more than a fancy name, new logo, exciting new literature, great colour scheme. To deliver the promise the business MUST understand what market they are in, what the market trends are.

    How customers see you (position in the market), how the business sees themselves (their positioning in the market).
    What are the comeptition upto? Do they fully understand the competition ?

    Masses of internal factors, like ... can they deliever what the market is after? Any retraining needed? There will need to be internal clarification on what the business stands for ... then and only then, if needed, should any external rebranding take place.

    Rebranding must throw most of the efforts internally, because its the people inside the business that will deliver the promise.
  • Posted by ReadCopy on Member
    When this is all over, you MUST come back and tell us the brand your talking about :-)
  • Posted by Chris Blackman on Accepted
    Jim

    I think BP is the best example I can think of.

    And the 2002 rebrand isn't the first time. They went "Green" in the late 80's, and a global cost of some GBP600M at the time I recollect, and their chairman said that the rebrand paid for itself inside (?) six (?) months (might have been nine, but it was short) simply in terms of increased sales attributable to the rebranding.

    It was an incredible exercise involving the almost overnight refurbishment of every service station all pretty much simultaneously. about as "big bang" as you can get.

    AndrewS has mentioned Consignia which was a dud. Another Brit example was the British Airways "flying fag packet" rebranding which seemed to last not very long at all. BTW for all the US readers - "fag packet" refers to the fact the new BA livery resembled a cigarette packet design. Fag=Cigarette in Britspeak, for the uninitiated.

    Back here in Oz, Cato's work on Commonwealth Bank and Qantas is legendary, well worth a look.

    Hope this helps.

    ChrisB

  • Posted by Carl Crawford on Accepted
    Check your email, 22 pages on re branding failures.

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