Brand turnarounds
Article Date: Jul 07 2006
Don’t fight perception
Despite many companies salvaging their sales by overhauling their brand identity, sudden changes to a corporate or product image can sometimes be inappropriate. It’s very difficult to pull that off if your product or service has a strong reputation (good or bad) already associated with it. Fighting against consumer perception is never going to be easy. That can lead to brand confusion and is unlikely to turn your fortunes around. Take the much publicised and disastrous re-brand of The Post Office Group to Consignia, which was eventually changed back after countless complaints.
Change all or nothing
Rob Morgan, former marketing director at Golden Wonder, says undergoing an all-encompassing re-brand is not necessarily the answer to your problems. Although during his time at Golden Wonder, the focus was often on the Golden Wonder brand itself, the individual sub-brands – Nik Naks, Wheat Crunchies, Ringos – had a reputation of their own. This could have been confusing for customers. The answer was to include the Golden wonder logo more prominently on all of the packaging while maintaining a strong brand identity for each product.
‘We wanted to get into customers’ consciousness and say that, yes, these are brands that people remember from when they were kids, they are still around and, yes, they are made by Golden Wonder.’ Yet, the focus was still on the individuality of each sub-brand as their value outweighed that of the parent company.
Saving a sinking ship
However, fundamental problems with a business aren’t likely to be fixed just by reinventing its brand identity. As Jane Piper explains, ‘It depends on your definition of “trouble” as to whether you can re-brand your way out of it. You can’t put a lick of paint on a failing business to pull it out of strife; it could do more harm than good. To assess your options properly you need to have an idea of your brand’s worth as an asset, to help you decide whether you’re better off re-branding or protecting the brand you’ve already established.’
She cites a quote from business advisory group KPMG – ‘For many businesses, the strength of their brands is a key driver of profitability and cash flow’ – adding that recognising the intangible and commercial importance of these assets ‘will reinforce this message’.
‘Putting a “value” on your brand is to put a value on your reputation. You therefore need to be able to assess the likely damage that could be done to your company if your brand loses value. This is the real driver for evaluating whether or not to realign your brand in the first place and can avoid costly off-the-cuff re-branding.’
Some brands clearly aren’t as much of a valuable asset as you might expect, if the famous name re-brands planned for 2006 are any indication. Tens of millions of pounds are being poured into re-christening NTL/ Telewest as Virgin and rebranding broadband provider Wanadoo as Orange. Consumers may be forgiven for feeling a little confused. Having been bombarded with brand messages about the advantages offered by Wanadoo, for example, now it seems these benefits have become irrelevant and the brands are being scrapped without explanation. It raises the question of why brands matter at all if they can be eradicated at the drop of a hat.
