I mentioned here the much discussed Pepsi Rebranding.

Fast Company revealed a leaked pdf that outlines the thinking behind the controversial new Pepsi logo.

If with this the designer team is trying to get excuses for their results and 5 months of working or the million dollar invoice, then they should listen to what everybody comment on this: it is a lame excuse.

Mixing gravitation in the Pepsi galaxy, energy fields, relativity of space and time, some mythical perfect proportions, some da Vinci Code and some smiley faces the document is trying, without a final conclusion, to make us stand up in ovation by the end of the reading.

Well, we will stand up…. And leave.

Download the document here.

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It’s not the firs nor the last of big brands that seems to think that their slumping sales will recover by slight changes in their branding. I’m not sure that this is the right answer or just an effort in the wrong direction at not the right time.

It took the designers five months to finalize the (new?) iconic logo. Five months and $1 million dollars for the design.

The purpose of the rebranding? “Making the logo more dynamic and more alive … [it is] absolutely a huge step in the right direction” said Frank Cooper, Pepsi’s VP-portfolio brands

So far, branding experts are in both camps. “It’s tilting the whole brand presentation from a classic expression of uniqueness and quality into something that is much more humorous, almost flippant,” said Tony Spaeth, an identity consultant. “It worries me that it is less durable, less permanent and classic. It comes across as more of a campaign idea than an enduring brand expression.” 

The new logo is Pepsi’s 11th in its 110-year history. Five logos have been introduced in the past 21 years, with the last update in 2002. 

Pepsi Logo

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I’d start with the Apple Computers who dropped computer from its name. The move is rather normal considering that iPod or iTunes are two of the main products of Apple Inc. and was announced in the same time with the buzzy launching of iPhone. Now, getting to this, cannot help myself not to admire the Apple capacity to create a buzz in the media, no matter that we’re talking about the internet of the classic mass media. The phone they launched is, I admit, a work of art and has a lot of great features but I wouldn’t hurry to name it neither a Blackberry killer, a computer or a smart phone. It’s more like a beautifully designed, big brand sustained swiss knife of mobiles.

Anyway, the iPhone road is not clear yet, at least in terms of naming and branding as Cisco sued Apple over the name itself considering they are marketing a VOIP phone with the same name for quite a while now. I wonder on this what made Steve Jobs go on with the name at the Macworld conference: the trust in the Apple brand power to impose the iPhone on the market (along with its previous similar names products: iPod, iTunes or iMac) or the time pressure of the launch. There were even rumors (not confirmed after all) that they already changed the name to iTouch Mobile. Well not yet.

Speaking about Apple’s phone, is worth mentioning its (two years in advanced blindly signed) exclusivity distribution contract with Cingular. And coming to this is also worth mentioning that AT&T launched its largest-ever ad campaign yesterday geared toward absorbing Cingular Wireless into the AT&T brand. More than that. AT&T will also be launching a campaign to rebrand BellSouth as AT&T. AT&T acquired BellSouth for $80 billion in December – the largest telecommunications merger in U.S. history. Cingular was a joint property of AT&T and BellSouth. Now that’s a huge rebranding effort to follow.

Citigroup, the global banking giant, is shrinking its name. Executives are prepared to rebrand the company “Citi” and to fold up its familiar red umbrella and instead use a logo with a stylized arc above the name. The design is similar to the “citi” logo that now appears on much of its consumer advertising, office buildings and credit cards. A rollout could begin as early as next month.

Pepsi is introducing 35 different packaging designs as part of a global brand revamp aimed at bringing younger consumers closer to the brand. It is only the 11th time the brand has changed its look in its 109-year history. The graphics, created by US agencies, will use themes associated with teens and young adults. Looking to get a little extra pop out of its sponsorship of the Super Bowl XLI Halftime Show, Pepsi announced it is giving away a jewel-encrusted Pepsi can valued at $100,000 as well as Super Bowl tickets for life.

Now, getting to the soon to come Super Bowl and Time Magazine person of the year 2006, just found via Church of the Customer Blog an interesting initiative of some advertisers that have jumped on the citizen-created bandwagon by inviting everyday people to help create their ads. Lining up are Chevrolet, Doritos, and the NFL. The contests for Chevy and the NFL are to submit ideas for commercials, not actual videos. Winning ideas are made into ads by professional agencies.

And, in the end, since I got next to sports, even though I’m planning a separate blog post on this, it has to be mentioned as an important start-of-the-year-branding-event and a subject follow, the multi-million dollar Beckham brand relocation in USA.

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As the people who deliver the brand promise are employees, making sure they understand and can deliver the brand to customers is vital—especially for companies within the service industry, where the relationship between employees and customers essentially is the product the company sells.

Re-branding takes time. The planning process that produces a new brand can take as long as two years. Educating employees about the new brand, and its implications on the company and their work, can also last years. That effort typically starts several weeks to several months before the new brand is unveiled to customers and continues after the official unveiling to external audiences.

The first step in getting employees on board is to get leadership on message. Once the leadership has been engaged, HR can begin to disseminate the new brand into lower levels of management.

The objective of the internal communications effort is to inspire employees to embrace and own the new brand. You want employees to hear first what their customers will eventually hear. The next step, training, even if it tends to be most intense in the months and weeks leading up to the external launch of the new brand, it does not necessarily end after the public unveiling.

Engaging events to commemorate a launch are often a component of internal re-branding efforts, and they usually occur immediately before the new brand is unveiled to customers and the public. When communicating about a new brand, there is no one way right for every person. So, deliver the message in as many ways as possible to reinforce the message.

The brand is about our client’s interaction with your company and your employees. It’s a small but crucial distinction. The aspect of the brand that matters most inside the company is an intangible one: how employees’ understanding of the company’s brand influences their behavior, whether they interact directly with customers or not.

Full article with details and examples, here.

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Formerly known Mastercard International has a new corporate name, MasterCard Worldwide. The company is also unveiling a new corporate signature and adopting a new corporate tagline, The Heart of Commerce, to reflect the company’s globally integrated structure and its strategic vision of advancing commerce worldwide.However, the familiar consumer brands such as MasterCard credit and debit cards and the advertising slogan “Priceless” would stay in place.

The new corporate positioning will serve as a unifying business-to-business platform, and lead to global efficiencies in the way MasterCard Worldwide connects with customers, merchants and shareholders through all communications channels.

The three circles of the new corporate logo build on the familiar interlocking red and yellow circles of the MasterCard consumer brand, and reflect the company’s unique, three-tiered business model as a franchisor, processor and advisor.

More here.

UPDATE: More about MasterCard brand history.

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Smart marketers evolve their brands over time to keep them relevant. Some do it well, while others become the target of cynical bloggers. To gear your next rebrand for success, sidestep these all-too-common mistakes:

1. Clinging to history.
2. Thinking the brand is the logo, stationery or corporate colors.
3. Navigating without a plan.
4. Refusing to hire a branding consultant without industry experience.
5. Not leveraging existing brand equity and goodwill.
6. Not trying on your customer’s shoes.
7. The rebrand lacks credibility or is a superficial facelift.
8. Limiting the influence of branding partners.
9. Believing rebranding costs too much.
10. Not planning ahead for adaptation.
11. Bypassing the basics.
12. Not calling the call center.
13. Forgetting that people don’t do what they say. (They do what they do.)
14. Getting strong-armed or intimidated by consultants.
15. Putting the wrong person in charge.
16. Strategy by committee.
17. Rebranding without research.
18. Basing a rebrand on advertising.
19. Tunnel focus.
20. Believing you’re too small to rebrand.

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[Re]-branding doesn’t mean recycling with new slogans and logos, it means a comprehensive do over. And establishing a brand is only the beginning, as advertising, marketing and public relations follow with even bigger budgets to extend the brand and infuse it into consumer culture.

For those who do it right, the rewards are often off the scale.

Miami agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, featured on the cover of BusinessWeek as “The Craziest Ad Guys in America,” are reeling it in for Virgin Atlantic Airways and Burger King with fanciful branded content that doesn’t follow traditional lines or overly committed media buys that suck up a year’s budget in no time.

In their own words, the CP+G boys “try to make the brand part of the pop culture,” relevant and very now.

That means going out into non-traditional routes like www.youtube.com where anyone, including ad agencies, can load video content and start a global conversation quickly. The content here is both bizarre and entertaining, with page views, comments and favorites recorded.

The firm has used eBay exclusively to sell brand toys and MySpace.com to push alter brand egos.

VW sales overall are up 20 percent, Virgin sales are up $50 million, and Burger King posted its first positive quarter earnings in a decade, according to the magazine.

And selling is what it’s really all about.

via. Full BW article here.

Tag: branding

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The tagline, ending the decades-long reign of “It’s everywhere you want to be,” is “Life takes Visa,” Lyons said. Although the tagline was used in the last couple of years in English-language communications in Latin American countries (actually Visa is using 5 different taglines for 6 different regions of the world – more here), TBWA\Chiat\Day decided to go with it and start promoting it next week during the Winter Olympics Openning ceremony.

The new brand campaign is the latest in a series of milestones marking Visa adapting its brand to its corporate evolution, with recently introduced new governance structure; new brand architecture, including a new logo and a new card design. More about the new branding campaign here: http://www.visa.com/advertising.

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Along with the logo change the famous “Intel Inside” phrase is out, and the company will now encourage consumers to “Leap Ahead“.

the new branding system simplifies and unifies the look and feel across Intel products and platforms in an effort to better communicate important characteristics and value to consumers.

says the press release on Intel’s home page.

The changes take the focus off individual chips and put it on “platforms” that the company hopes will spur the integration of Intel-based computers with digital media and networks in homes, businesses and schools. The new campaign also plays down Intel ‘s venerable Pentium brand while emphasizing its Centrino line of laptop chips and a new effort called “Viiv,” which aims to integrate PCs into home entertainment such as by recording TV shows and sending them to other devices.

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Starting from recently over-buzzed Atlanta re-branding, Ries is making a extremly good and sustained point about the need and the opportunity of rebranding, changing logos and slogans, or becoming “too creative” in terms of branding.

What leads cities, states, countries and companies to concoct meaningless, unmemorable slogans? I believe the culprit is “creativity.”

Every day of the week, advertising agencies are hired to create new, compelling branding strategies and fired when these new, compelling branding strategies don’t work.

The best example of the power of consistency is the Marlboro cowboy, who has been riding the range for 50 years. The advertising doesn’t win any awards, but it has taken the brand from nowhere to become the No. 1 selling cigarette brand in the world.

A powerful brand is not built by creativity, although there needs to be a creative spark to get the brand ignited. A powerful brand is built by consistency, year after year after year.

Basically if you have something that is working, don’t try to fix it. The re-branding decision is a tough one, as long as we do not have (re)branding in our minds a purpose (as some agencies have it), but as a tool for sustaining and growing the business.

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Re-branding the Right Way

Tag: Re-branding, Rebranding

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