Corporate Rebranding @ Yahoo.

Rebranding has become quite popular and slowly gaining “fad” status. The latest in line is Yahoo! According to Wikipedia, Rebranding is the process by which a product or service developed with one brand, company or product line affiliation is marketed or distributed with a different identity. This may involve radical changes to the brand’s logo, brand name, image, marketing strategy, and advertising themes. These changes are typically aimed at the repositioning of the brand/company, usually in an attempt to distance itself from certain negative connotations of the previous branding, or to move the brand upmarket. Rebranding can be applied to new products, mature products, or even products still in development.

Brands are the identity of an Organization. But it seems necessary in the present business environment for companies to relook their brands to make it relevant to the changing consumer and market preference.

Yahoo! Has recently jumped this wagon. According to the Wall street journal, “Yahoo is planning to reintroduce its battered brand to the public with a massive global marketing campaign, according to people familiar with the effort.The Internet Company’s new tagline, “It’s You!”

The Y in the “You” is the Y from “Yahoo,” and the famous Yahoo exclamation point will pop up too. The global campaign is focused on personalization and how Yahoo can help people navigate all their services and information online.”

The brand has launched its $100 million + global brand campaign for It’sY!ou, on September 28 in the US and on October 5 in UK and India. It will also reach major and emerging markets worldwide, by 2010.Apart from the ad campaign there also changes made to its vision and core products. Let us look into the factors that will help Yahoo succeed and the pitfalls it may face.

1. Rebranding means to stay relevant. Analyzing changes in target markets when exploring opportunities for brand expansion, repositioning and revitalization. This is something Yahoo seems to have done. The company has announced that it has realigned all aspects of its business around simplifying and enhancing the Web experience for people throughout the world. In fact even the vision statement has been changed to

Yahoo!: “To be the center of people’s online lives.”

1. The brand is more than the logo, stationery or corporate colors or Ad campaign: In the words of Elisa Steele, Yahoo! executive vice president and chief marketing officer, This is much more than an advertising campaign,”It’s about how Yahoo! delivers its promise to the market in everything we do. Our brand strategy shows our commitment to delivering personally relevant online experiences.” Of course there has been a change in the Logo, the Yahoo yokel, the campaign uses new taglines as well, including “The Internet is under new management. Yours,” “Now the Internet has a personality. Yours,” and “There’s a new master of the digital universe. You.” But to add to this complete marketing communications strategy, they have also put in efforts to change their core P – Product.
2. Product Enhancements: The Yahoo Finance site provided an update on all the new features added. Here is the excerpt: The last two months have brought major changes to Yahoo!’s core products. For example:

ü  Yahoo!’s homepage allows people to access their favorite content and sites on any screen from a single Web location.

ü  Yahoo! Mail now offers simpler photo sharing, editing and easy access to helpful and productive apps.

ü  Yahoo! Search has been updated today to make Web search results more relevant and meaningful.

ü  High-quality video calling has been added to Yahoo! Messenger for instant connections with friends and family.

ü  Yahoo!’s new mobile homepage enables people to continue their Internet experience on their mobile browser. Additionally, new mobile apps including the recently launched Yahoo! for mobile, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Fantasy Football, Yahoo! Messenger and Flickr, bring best of Yahoo! experiences to mobile devices.

So the Yahoo campaign is well set to be a success, but a few points to note along the journey would be,

1. The Internal Branding: People are the back bone of any organization and Yahoo is yet to stand out successful with its employees as brand ambassadors. With a new vision, it becomes imperative that the management comes down to its employees to create awareness of the core values of the company. And please inform the changes to the call center!
2. The Product: Yes Yahoo has made changes to its product and now the website also looks interesting… but the same is available with Google, even twitter and facebook. Product wise Yahoo needs to position itself differently. Else the vision of “To be the center of people’s online lives.”  will only be an inconsequential tagline.
3. Give the Yahoo user a personality: The Yahoo user needs to feel part of a focus group and only then would he feel proud to use Yahoo. Give him an identity. Being for the mass it must be something that we all want to be.

Let’s hope the ! mark signifies exclamation and not a question mark on the future of Yahoo – Its Y!ou.

What is a Brand?

The minute the word ‘Branding’ is uttered, a myriad of logos pass before our eyes: Coca-Cola, Pizza Hut, Titan, Raymond, the wide range of HLL and P&G’s FMCG products, even club holidays and Bollywood heroes; a veil of magic surrounds these names. They seem larger than life and have a very strong personality. And this “Brand” is becoming the key source of differentiation among the consumers. A brand today is not just a name or logo to identify your product. It is a strategy to differentiate and position in the minds of consumers. It’s a marketing tool where loads of money is invested in advertising campaigns. It is a corporate asset that raises your Company’s valuations. In short brands are the single most important factor that needs to reside in the minds of target consumers.

In today’s era of easy replication and shorter periods of first mover advantage, branding will come as a sustainable long term strategy. To succeed in branding you must understand the needs and wants of your customers and prospects. You do this by integrating your brand strategies through your company at every point of public contact.

A strong brand though very difficult to build is invaluable as the battle for customers intensifies day by day. Today the importance of  investing in building a brand and making it the foundational piece in marketing communication is not only increasing it has become imperative.

The Branding Language

It is very important to have a clear understanding of the language of branding. The branding vocabulary is filled with numerous terms, many of which will be dealt in great detail in the coming chapters. Unfortunately semantics often gets in the way of understanding these terms and their importance. First let us understand the basic meaning of the term Brand and Branding.

What is a Brand?

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a A brand is more than the signs, symbols and logo. It is the sum total of experiences and perceptions that resides within the hearts and minds of customers. In his book, ‘Building Strong Brands’ David Aaker suggests the brand is a ‘mental box’.

The famous advertising copywriter and ad agency founder David Ogilvy defines brand as “The intangible sum of a product’s attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it’s advertised.”

Successful brands add intangible value to the core benefits of the product. For example, all watches tell time but it was Titan that made it the most favorite gift.

Therefore brand is,

• A Company’s promise about itself and its products.
• The emotional link between the product and the consumer.
• Intangible and resides in the minds of the consumer

Branding and Brand Management

Branding is that fine blend of marketing and psycho – sociology that associates the tangible and intangible attributes of a product, influences the thought-process in the minds of consumers and creates value.

And the complete set of corporate framework focused to differentiate the brand in an attractive, meaningful and compelling way for the targeted audience is called Brand Management.

Thus we see that a brand can form a relevant resonance with the consumer and this forms the basis to create a sustainable competitive advantage. So that’s why Nike with its Swoosh reminds us of maximum performance and to strive for the very best with its “Just do it”. Or when we think of Chanel we see a sensual, strong and independent woman.

So a consumer product is in the present in the market but a brand and its personality resides in the minds and hearts of the consumers and it is this that creates the choices between products and brands.

Top 20 coolest brands of 2009

iPhone is named as the coolest brand. Coolbrands
have published a list of top coolest brands for the year 2009 – 10. check out how cool your choices are.

Top 20 CoolBrands 2009/2010

1. iPhone
2. Aston Martin
3. Apple
4. iPod
5. Nintendo
6. YouTube
7. BlackBerry
8. Google
9. Bang & Olufsen
10. PlayStation
11. Xbox
12. Tate Modern
13. Dom Perignon
14. Virgin Atlantic
15. Ferrari
16. Sony
17. Mini
18. Vivienne Westwood
19. Rolex
20. BBC iPlayer

Brand Success

What is it in a brand that catches the attention of millions? Makes the same variety seeking customer identify himself with the brand and become a brand evangelist for life? The name? Product? Image? History is filled with stories of how successful brands have performed and many that have declined over the ages. Take the Liril 2000 for example. Liril as a soap has always been associated with “Freshness”. Suddenly the tagline is no more freshness but ‘rejenuvate”. The new Liril without the girl in the waterfall is indicative of the troubled times the brand is facing. Of course

liril 2000

HUL has been trying to rejenuvate the brand itself for years now. Liril had a shower gel in 1994, a cologne variant in 1996, Liril Rainfresh in 1999, and even an Orange and Icy Blue variant followed by an Aloe Vera and Lemon introduction. Now it resembles Lever 2000 even if the sources at HUL deny the association. In comparison Lux has always had the filmstars – the sitaron ka soundarya soap. Lifebuoy even today maintains its germicide image with the koi dar nahi family. Then why does Liril not have this loyalty especially when the market for lime freshness soap is pretty empty? When the brand’s market share that was once at 14% of the overall soap segment, to a lowly 1.3% market share the freshness of the soap has not impressed the market. Another classic example is Thumbs up that refused to die even after the giant, Coke trying. Having been ousted from the country earlier, Coke this time was on a acquisition spree. On November 12,1993, the Parle group assigned their trade marks in the beverages bearing the names “Gold Spot”, “Thums Up”, “Limca”, “Maaza”, “Rim Zim” and “Citra” to Coca Cola. The graves of “Gold Spot”, “Rim Zim” and “Citra” can be found in the neglected marketing rooms of Coke but Thumbs up and now Limca refused to die. Coca-Cola apparently did try to kill Thumbs Up, but soon realized that Pepsi would benefit more than Coke with the change and hence relaunced Thumbs up against Pepsi. Even after neglect, Limca is still a very popular brand today. So Coke did not have a choice but promote it. So what made Goldspot fade away when Thumbs up fought on? In the words of Robert Blanchard, former P&G executive, from “Parting Essay,” July 1999 “A brand is the ‘personification of a product, service, or even entire company.’ Like any person, a brand has a physical ‘body’. Also, like a person, a brand has a name, a personality, character and a reputation. Like a person, you can respect, like and even love a brand. You can think of it as a deep personal friend, or merely an acquaintance. You can view it as dependable or undependable; principled or opportunistic; caring or capricious. Just as you like to be around certain people and not others, so also do you like to be with certain brands and not others. Also, like a person, a brand must mature and change its product over time. But its character, and core beliefs shouldn’t change. Neither should its fundamental personality and outlook on life. People have character…so do brands. A person’s character flows from his/her integrity: the ability to deliver under pressure, the willingness to do what is right rather than what is expedient. You judge a person’s character by his/her past performance and the way he/she thinks and acts in both good times, and especially bad. The same are true of brands.”

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