Can an Old Brand Change Positioning?

Have you noticed how many consumer brands are trying to redefine themselves? It’d difficult to reposition an old brand in consumers’ minds.

In the last frew months, many are redefining their brand positioning from quality or convenience into price. Kind of following the recession trend I guess. They focus with a weekly or monthly estimate multiplied by 12. “just switch to our brand and save 15.50 a week- that’s over $800 a year.!

Hyundai just came out with an ad campaign where they will take the car back if you lose your job. Very creative use of recession-proofing the purchase. Overcoming objections!

McDonald’s has been trying to reposition their brand as more healthy for a while — especially since the supersize movie came out. Robyn McMaster at Brain Based Biz recently visited them to rediscover their brand and see if the products really merited the new positioning. 1/17/09 Update: This BusinessWeek story about the McDonald’s Makeover sheds some light onto their rebranding and new marketing position with a global redesign of the packaging. I find it interesting how they try to balance the green initiatives, obesity concerns, local grown ingredients, fast convenience food, low cost, global language constraints, and the whole friendly thing. When you consider all the constraints it is a wonder the brand isn’t in psychotherapy!
FedEx Kinko’s just relaunched their joint branding and now is re launching again as just FedExOffice. Good bye Kinko’s!

So what is the balance between brand equity, all the repositioning dollars and just plain old starting from scratch?

Are you rebranding your business in 2009? Even without realizing it - by abandoning your service and quality positioning in favor of low price positioning?

Rebranding: More than just a logo

When should you rebrand your company? Here are times when my company has been asked to lead the rebranding effort:

  • The company was sold
  • The company was getting ready to be sold
  • there was a significant change in management
  • Focus was shifted to a new product line or service
  • The sales channel shifted to a different way of interacting with customers

Rebranding is more than just updating a logo, refreshing a website or reprinting a new sell sheet. It may involve a new potential customer list, a new system for providing estimates, and should include a system for tracking and analyzing sales results. One recent successful rebrand is Key. They have been able to show their aspirations to keep growing as a result.

Rebranding means answering these questions first:

  • Who is our target market?
  • Why should they care?
  • What is our unique competitive advantage?
  • How should we tell our story?
  • What’s the best way to contact them?

Businesses evolve over time, but sometimes the branding and marketing efforts have to play catch up. Does your business still have the old outdated tagline in materials that was “before ______”. Maybe it is time to look at rebranding your marketing efforts. While a new logo isn’t the whole picture of a rebrand, having a new logo isn’t a bad thing, hiring logo design services wasn’t a bad idea!

More Rebranding Articles:

Keep a Fresh Face on your Branding
Rebranding a Chrysler into a Nissan? Or more likely a Nissan into a Chrysler!
Are You Rebranding? or Just Updating Your Look?
Rebranding to help Marketing the Message
Rebranding: Fast, Faster, Fastest

Rebranding a Chrysler into a Nissan? Or more likely a Nissan into a Chrysler!

When is a Nissan, not a Nissan?  When it’s a Chrysler…

Yesterday’s article in the Wall Street Journal has rebranding car story about Nissan and Chrysler teaming up to offer a midsize car.  It was interesting to me on several levels:

  • I’ve test driven just about all the cars the article talks about, even with Nissan 350z horsepower mods
  • I currently drive the best selling car
  • I almost bought the 4th best selling car
  • I can’t imagine buying those last two
  • It’s going to take a lot of marketing and branding to pull this off…

Seems like people research the cars they buy a lot more than say a computer.  Like who actually makes it, regardless of the brand name on the hood ornament.  Maybe I’m wrong, but won’t people actually know that it’s actually a Nissan even though it’s called a Chrysler?  Will a great car be able to overcome a bad brand?

Good idea or bad idea… what’s your thought?