Mastering The Art Of Rebranding
By Jacky Tai, Principal Consultant, StrategiCom
12 Sep 2007

Rebranding is a term that is bandied about by marketing professionals and consultants quite a lot these days. Every time I hear someone use that term, I cringe because most people haven’t got the slightest clue what rebranding is all about.

In order to fully understand the concept of rebranding, you must understand 3 things:

1) What is a brand?
2) What is branding?
3) What is rebranding?

A Brand Is Just An Idea That You In The Mind

Walter Landor, the advertising legend, once said, “Products are made in factories. Brands are created in the mind.” Walter hit the target spot on. A brand doesn’t exist in the real world. It is simply an idea that your brand owns in the minds of your customers. If you want to know if you have a brand or not, find out if your brand owns an idea in the mind – one idea, not two, not ten, not a hundred. One.

What is Xerox? What is the idea that Xerox owns? Photocopiers. What is Kodak? What is the one idea that Kodak owns? Film. What is Otis? Elevators. What is Google? Search. What is eBay? Online auction. What is Amazon.com? Virtual bookstore. What is Boeing? Commercial jets. What is Gulfstream? Business jets. What is DeWalt? Power tools. What is Heineken? Premium beer. What is Kleenex? Tissue. You get the idea yet?

If you don’t own an idea, you don’t have a brand. If you are associated with too many fragmented ideas, you also don’t have a brand. At best, companies that don’t own an idea in the minds of their customers will only have a weak brand.

Branding Is All About Differentiation, Nothing More

Branding is not a 21 st century concept. It is not a 20 th century concept. It is not even a 19 th century concept. It was created 4,000 years ago as a method of differentiating cows. A branding iron with the owner’s logo or initials is heated in fire and then used to burn a unique identifying mark into the rump of the cows to differentiate each cattle owner’s cows.

4,000 years later, branding has grown in terms of sophistication and scope of application but the function of branding is still the same. It is still to differentiate cows! The only difference is the cows of the 21 st century now come in many forms – companies, organisations, products, services and even people. The process of branding is still the process of differentiation but I always tell companies this, “Be different with a great idea. Not a stupid one.” My colleagues and I at StrategiCom have developed 13 strategies that can be used to differentiate any brand in any market but that is another story for another time.

If you are not differentiated, there is no way you can become a strong brand. If customers don’t perceive any difference between you and your competitors, why shouldn’t they just buy the cheapest brand? You can still be a highly profitable company by selling cheap stuff but the question is, can you maintain your price advantage next year, or the year after that? If you can, go ahead and sell cheap. Chances are, there will be somebody out there who can make your best price look like a joke.

Rebranding Is All About Replacing An Existing Idea With A New One

A brand is simply an idea that you own in the minds of your customers. In order to get that idea into the minds of your customers, your brand must be highly differentiated. If you are not differentiated, why would anyone reserve a special place in their mind for your brand?

Rebranding is the process of replacing an existing idea with a new one. Many rebranding projects fail because companies and their consultants don’t understand this simple thing. Rebranding is not just about changing the name or logo of your company although rebranding sometimes requires a change in logo or company name or both. Rebranding is about how you can remove an existing idea that is strongly associated with the brand and replacing it with a new idea. How successful the rebranding exercise is depends on how strong the existing idea is.

Volvo owns the idea safety. And it is such a powerful idea. When you mention safety, people will think of Volvo even if you don’t actually say “safe cars”. Just mention the word safety and Volvo comes to mind. Volvo is a strong brand because of that. Ironically, this makes rebranding Volvo an extremely difficult and I dare say, futile exercise. If Volvo wants to rebrand itself as high performance, how successful do you think they will be?

Xerox owns the idea photocopiers. Xerox tried to rebrand itself as an office automation company and the company poured billions of dollars into R&D at its famed Palo Alto Research Centre which invented the computer mouse, the laser printer and the Graphical User Interface (GUI) that inspired Steve Jobs to create the famed Apple point-and-click user interface. Could Xerox have succeeded in rebranding itself? Ironically, no, despite Xerox’s undoubted technical expertise because the idea that Xerox owns is so strong.

In 1991, AT&T bought NCR (yes, that cash register company) for US$7.3 billion and pumped in a further US$2.8 billion to rebrand it as a computer company. What an insane idea! Did it work? Do you see NCR computers being sold these days? Exactly.

Rebranding works better when the brand is weak. Well, if you have a strong brand that stands for something wonderful in the minds of your customers, why would you want to mess with it, anyway, unless you have a death wish for your brand.

The Next Step

Before you run off on a rebranding exercise, please conduct a thorough Perception Audit to find out exactly what your stakeholders (management, staff, customers, distributors, suppliers, etc) perceive the brand to be. In 99 out of 100 cases, you will be surprised by the findings. What you think the brand is all about is very often not what other stakeholders think of the brand.

And don’t do this exercise on your own! You need a skilled consulting firm to tease all this information out of your stakeholders. If you are willing to invest in a proper Perception Audit, I would rather you don’t do it all because if you make a mistake, it will do more damage than good. Once the Perception Audit is done, you will have a good idea if you can rebrand successfully or not. If your stakeholders see you as a black cat, there is no point trying to rebrand yourself as a white mouse as that will just be a royal waste of time, effort and money.

Jacky Tai is a Principal Consultant of StrategiCom, a B2B branding specialist with 11 offices around the world. StrategiCom focuses on helping B2B companies create powerful brands through differentiation and it has created 13 strategies for differentiation that are used to effective brand a new company or rebrand an old one. Jacky is also the author of highly acclaimed “Transforming Your Business Into A Brand” which was co-written with StrategiCom’s CEO, Wilson Chew. To find out more about StrategiCom, visit www.strategicom.com and to get in touch with Jacky e-mail him at jacky.tai@strategicom.com.