Corporate rebranding

Muhammed Rizard and Mohamed Irshad Management and Commerce Faculty,

South Eastern University

In today's business environment, we often see a lot of rebranding practices of different types of companies in Sri Lanka as well as in the global arena. The reasons for rebranding may vary, but logically we could understand that the companies are not satisfied or not willing to persist with the current branding strategy.

Whatsoever rebranding strategy that the company puts entire or partial branding off to be modernized, it requires a specific reason(s) that may be either internal or external factors which as drastically enforced for rebranding.

Last of all, these practices end up with changing or modifying customer perception and impact on the consequences of customer buying behaviour.

Therefore, this article focuses on the above area which is important to the corporate and to the organizations which think to implement rebranding initiatives in the near future. The vital perspective of positive and negative sides is discussed with real brand experience.

Corporate rebranding is just an evolution

The terms rebranding, innovation or else rejuvenation are so popular in the international markets rather than Sri Lanka, because of the tough competition between rivalries, changing customer mindsets, as well as crisis that rapidly affect the business and marketing. In recent times, we could observe a lot of mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances and affinity marketing that exist majorly in the airline industry, information and communication technology fields, industry of search engine marketing, and even financial institutions.

They were very excellent at their practices of rebranding implemented that ran through in the recent past with the significant amount of efforts in changing the strategic direction of the company, internal reorganization and new designs of logo as a refreshed brand identity that intends either to change customer perceived quality or increase their association with brand.

For instance, Philip Morris became the Altria Group.

British Steel turned into Corus. Andersen Consulting changed its name to Accenture. The consulting division of KPMG became Bearing Point.

Daimler-Benz after merging with Chrysler became Daimler- Chrysler.

The UK Post Office switched (briefly) to Consignia and then again to Royal Mail. Paine Webber now operates under the USB brand.

There are numerous others: AOL-Time Warner, Vodafone- Mannesmann, Exxon-Mobil, and Deutsche Telekom- Voicestream in the global markets.

Even in Sri Lanka, after the acquisition, Mobitel became Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel, Dialog changed its design and company name, Airtel made a change with logo and design, NDB after the merger in the insurance sector became as AVIVA NDB, and some of the repositioning practices of FMCG brands like Dettol, Lifebuoy and insurance brand like Union Assurance with new logo and emotional value proposition.

The corporate and brand identity like brand promises, its elements, brand image, brand culture etc become as an important part to ignore or dismiss something from its previous blueprint that the biggest company can afford to invest in.

A consistent and strong brand identity across offices, retail outlets, stationery, websites, van livery, packaging, media, and other customer touch points that induce the moment of truth of brands create pure awareness about new concept of rebranding.

Even though, all these sort of corporate and brand identity are perfectly implemented, some companies would be lacking on its achievement of objectives in the process of corporate rebranding.

However, corporate rebranding is a costly exercise and it requires the collaboration of top management for a good achievement of objectives at the end. Whatever strategies the company takes in the boardroom with the experts of top management, consultants, and strategists, the backing of innovation campaign or team that companies in Sri Lanka rarely keep on aligned to their business and marketing operations would work to get the competitive advantage in the tough marketplace.

This campaign can be used with the dedication of marketing and brand teams in gathering radical ideas for new products and services, promotions, and routes to markets.

Groundwork support for corporate rebranding

Groundwork supports from the all key stakeholders are the imperative factors to implement the corporate rebranding strategy. Andrew Pickess Strategy Director at design agency Rufus Leonard says the problems start when companies use visual and corporate identity tools to say something new about the business, without having done its groundwork to support their claims.

"It goes wrong when you come up with a new brand name and a new identity, but they bear no relations to the experience customers have of dealing with the company," he explains.

"As a result neither employees nor customers identify with it. It is like an ill-fitting suit, disconnected from reality, and the customers and employees whom you should be motivating through the design process lose confidence in what they being told." "You have to start by looking at the foundation of what business is trying to communicate, advises Pinkess.

In the perspective of Sri Lankan organizations, in the phase of groundwork support, obviously it is better for the company if the CEO understands the necessity of corporate rebranding as being appropriate, because they have the privileges of making the funds out-flow.

The companies such as Unilever and Dialog need big marketing budgets. Another important element in this phase is internal marketing. In this case, how the company leverages the internal marketing is through the proper training. The people who work for the company have to understand the changes that company brings and the implications of that change for the business.

The biggest companies do training for their employees, especially front liners and customer care people with regard to rebranding strategy on what newly it communicates and offers to customers, because "The brand is what the organization represents its key messages and positioning, a set of attributes that communicate clearly what it does," Pickess says.

Subsequently, "the company needs to have some negotiation meetings with their key stakeholders to feel they have been part of making this thing works. You can not turn up and push it at every one," says James Bull creative director at design agency Moving Brands.

With the groundwork that is done in right execution, the company has to focus on the value of corporate rebranding strategy on what it exactly communicates and tells to their both internal and external audiences. The following model further illustrates exhaustively right to the context of corporate rebranding.

Four stage model into corporate rebranding

Robert Jones, a consultant at design agency Wolff Olins, presents a comprehensive four-stage approach model for branding projects that could be used as well for corporate rebranding tricks.

Stage One: The idea

With the backing of right reason, and right timing for rebranding, this stage emphasizes how a company involves in an in-depth research to find out the answers for the questions. If you are a mobile communication technology and networking company, we would ask: what's wrong with this world of mobile communication and technology and networking? And then look at the intersection between this and what company offers.

On one hand, if there is no gap that exists in the analysis you did, there you could not find any reasons for rebranding, but on the other hand, if the company finds the gap, there is an absolute need for rebranding where they need further to do an in-depth research and analysis to the question "what's wrong".

The particular question "what's wrong" can be backed up with the analysis of company's current competitive position and business model, market structure, current and future industry trends, as well as current and potential target segments to find where it falls on that means in which area the company is lacking with or have the problem that could be resolved through the rebranding.

Afterward, the company should involve in collecting different ideas from various kind of people and experts. The innovation campaign can be utilized extensively here in collecting ideas. Some companies use external research or design agency for this sort of endeavours.

They explore idea generation with the interviews of employees, customers, analysts and experiencing competitor products and services.

The shortlisted ideas could be validated based on following criteria: Is there a customer need? Is it feasible? Can we generate significant revenues and profits from this? Does it play to our strengths? A successful validation would induce the top management to flow the funds out to the particular project.

Stage Two: Action

This is about bringing entire corporate rebranding concepts into application. A company would not go through or practice all elements of rebranding activities, but some require repositioning the value proposition, some desire to change or design for a new logo. After merger happens in the business, they might have to come for a new corporate identity, organizational culture, brand promises, logo, values, system and even strategic direction.

Whatsoever happens in the rebranding process, the change should be apparent to the customers, whether through better products, better customer service or improvement in any other aspect of the company's business where it was previously lacking. There is no point going out looking different unless companies really have changed.

Stage Three: Communication

This is the communication part for internal and external audiences. As discussed in the previous context, it is important to communicate with senior management, employees, and shareholders if applicable. For the external audiences like customers, the media play a vital role in taking new brand identity to customer segments.

An integrated marketing communication is the most appropriate to the context.

In Sri Lanka, TV and press media take an empirical evidence for creating a significant amount contribution in the rebranding practices of companies. A typical example is, Nolimit, a leading fashion brand in Sri Lanka, previously known as French Corner, was positioned as a powerful and innovative brand that has an innovation in terms of introducing new varieties of costumes and style of established or manufactured brands as well as private labels.

At the time of changing their brand name, their advertisement campaign worked well. A good TV advertising took a major part in changing the customer perception, and attitude about the brand.

In the recent times, the proliferation of social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter can be a great asset and potential for the companies of which products and services are marketed to individual or retail customers. It allows peer group idea exchange that becomes as a basis of positive word of mouth or viral marketing.

In this stage, a company requires a huge marketing budget or cost involvement so that a proper affiliation with a consultancy agency is important especially to SMEs and regional companies that spend limited fund scale for this kind of endeavor.

Stage Four: Process

This is the evaluation stage of the activities that are put into practice. After some months, even years rather than weeks from its implementation, the companies could do some surveys, field researches, checking its databases, to find out what sort of changes that the activities brought in terms of customer perception, their association with brands compared with 'before'.

They too have to make sure at this stage whether the stated brand objectives are achieved.

The extent of corporate rebranding into customer intimacy through brand experience

Experiential marketing becomes as a buzzword for the successful brands in the marketplace. In rebranding, you are trying to communicate a same brand with innovation. In our viewpoint, the elements of experiential marketing in creating a good brand experience should be thoroughly planned. Some events are organized to reflect the brand promises, and its attributes. In the global marketing arena, take the example of upper market department store Liberty that hosted 'stitch 'n' bitch' sessions in its cafe to help it connect more closely with shoppers.

In a research commissioned by the experiential marketing agency Jack Morton worldwide, states that, 82% of consumers say that participating in an event is more engaging than any other form of communication and 85% say that they will tell their family and friend about it.

Most importantly it makes consumers more likely to purchase if they have attended a brand event.

In Sri Lanka as well, the big multinational company Unilever affiliated with Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel hosted an experiential marketing event titled on "Sunsilk Style International" to offer amazing discounts, free makeovers, international hair and beauty advice, and prizes, and also in the cricket festival of ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, Etisalat introduced a cricket games for their fans in the Facebook, where the users and fans could play a bit of cricket feel that really allows to enjoy the brand of Etisalat.

It is very important for companies to choose the right experiential marketing event as per the strengths of the brand. Experiential marketing is not limited to FMCG products but any product can try and practise the moment of offering real brand experience. Another important factor in this is the customers. When choosing the right event for experiential marketing, the company has to understand the type of customer segment, the capacity of them, purchasing intends, and social classes.

For instance the Nestamalt brand of Nestle did a marathon running in rural areas and offered T-Shirts and free packs of Nestamalt, the people in the rural areas were curious to participate in the event while some educated people were reluctant to participate.

Likewise, in the corporate rebranding process, if a company considers this kind of experiential marketing activities, which really allow the customers to enjoy the brand experience, it would be a powerful way of bringing the brands to the life of customers where they feel more intimacy to the brands, and would be ease of making a strong customer association towards the brands.