Ensuring
Consumer Connect while Re-branding
By
Harish Bijoor
Re-branding is in. Every brand, at some point of time or the other, needs
to look at it as a process. A process that will bring back the zing, and more
importantly life.
Re-branding happens due to many reasons. A change in management, a change
in the brand-manager who wants to make an impact, sagging volumes, a crisis
that has gotten the old brand into a mire, a buy-out, and many more reasons
indeed.
My two big reasons for a brand re-launch however:
1. Fatigue: When a brand has been in the market for a while,
and when it has seen and been through successive generations of consumers, the
brand looks and feels jaded. Fatigue has set in. It is this tipping point of
fatigue that jolts brands to consider a re-positioning or a re-branding
exercise.
2. Competition: Competition is the ever-changing format in which
brands live and thrive. Most brands are able to remain contemporary, relevant,
original and innovative enough to fight competition. However, there
comes a time when the competitive framework has changed rapidly and the
old brand finds it difficult to sustain itself amidst aggressively young
offerings. It is then time to consider a change and re-positioning exercise.
The process can be as scientific as you want it to be. Product re-design,
advertising re-design, branding re-design and positioning re-design are all
metric-driven processes. Every bit of this is basis brand strategy and
long-term brand sustenance norms that are critical aspects we consider.
Every one of this is based on customer perception, expectation and
aspiration. Customer profiling is a key part of this exercise. This profiling
takes into consideration the existing customer, the lapsed user, today's new
consumer and tomorrow's new customer as scenarios painted by specific
scenario-extension tools.
The process is reasonably scientific and depends on acute sets of
sociological matrices that are put together for the brand and its plan.
As one wades through all this science, it is very important to remember the one big factor you must never abandon in your re-branding initiative: Consumer connect.
Consumer
connect is the most precious part of the DNA of your brand. You exist at large
as a brand basis this one facet. The consumer is the most important entity in
your re-branding plan. His and her connect with your brand is umbilical. It
needs to be nurtured as such. It needs to be handled with the kid gloves it
deserves and demands.
The consumer
is essentially very visual, very aural and finally very written-word driven. In
that order. In some categories such as food, beverages and even retail, the
consumer is very smell-oriented as well. The fact and point to remember is that
a re-branding exercise needs to take care of its brand sensorials carefully
before unleashing it out on the consumer. Do also remember that this consumer
of yours is status quo oriented, and she hates change. Change in the way her
brand looks, feels, sounds, smells and at times tastes. You on the other hand,
want this change to happen, be seen, be accepted and replaced in the
consumer-connect profile of your consumer. And you want that desperately. To an
extent you are swimming against the tide of what your consumer wants. And you
want to obviously win.
The biggest
common mistake and in fact the lowest common denominator of a mistake marketers
make in a re-branding exercise is the weightage they give to the written word
that communicates re-branding, and the lack of weightage they give to the rest
of the brand sensorials and brand experience parameters. The classic example I
can quote is the re-branding of Indian Airlines to Indian. A fair bit of money
was spent on media communication, and excited, I bought a ticket with
anticipation. Every experience of mine, from the point of checking in, to the
point of entering an aircraft and being greeted by the airhostess on board, was
just the same. In fact worse from the last time I remembered using the airline.
No change. No effort to cue the new. Re-branding is certainly more than
re-painting the tail of an aircraft with a nice-looking logo. Remember, you
have excited the status quo oriented consumer with promises, and you have let
her down at the first instance possible. With a thud. You should have let the
sleeping dog lie quietly in the first place.
Consumer
connect is therefore the essence of a re-branding exercise. If your media brand
has undergone a name change, and you promise that nothing has changed except
the dog-tag label, make sure that your promise is sustained. Make sure there is
just not a whiff of change that the consumer will look for, now that you have
sensitized her.
Consumer
connect is a sensorial process and initiative. You take it for granted when it
is there. You miss it sorely when it dissipates. Don’t let it.
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Twitter.com @harishbijoor
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