Rebranding

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Rebranding is the process by which a product or service developed with one brand or company or product line affiliation is marketed or distributed with a different identity. This involves radical changes to the brand's logo, brand name, image, marketing strategy, and advertising themes. These changes typically result in the repositioning of the brand / company. It may just involve merely superficial changes.

Rebranding can be applied to new products, mature products, or even products still in development. The process can occur intentionally through a deliberate change in strategy or occur unintentionally from unplanned, emergent situations, such as a corporate restructuring).

Following a merger or acquisition, companies usually rebrand newly acquired products to keep them consistent with an existing product line. For one example, when Symantec acquired Quarterdeck in November 1998Quarterdeck, Symantex chose to rename CleanSweep to Norton CleanSweep. Later on, the company chose to reposition its entire product line by grouping products into a bundle known as Norton SystemWorks. Symantec is not the only software company to reposition and rebrand its products. Much of Microsoft's product line consists of rebranded products, including MS-DOS, FoxPro and Visio.

When a product offering is marketed separately to several target markets this is called market segmentation. When part of a market segmentation strategy involves offering significantly different products in each market, this is called product differentiation. This market segmentation/product differentiation process can be thought of as a form of rebranding. What distinguishes it from other forms of rebranding is that the process does not entail the elimination of the original brand image. Dexxa computer mice are rebranded Logitech devices sold at a lower price by Logitech in the low-end market segment without undercutting their mid-range products. Rebranding in this manner allows one set of engineering and QA to be used to create multiple products with minimal modifications and additional expense.

New Coke and British Airways ethnic liveries are both attempts at rebranding that had to be aborted due to a poor reception from the public. BA's world art tailfins were well received abroad, but failed to please the carrier's key customers, British and North American travellers.

Rebranding has become something of a fad in the last decade, with some companies rebranding several times. The rebranding of Phillip Morris to Altria was done to help the company shed its negative image. Other rebrandings, such as the British Post Office's attempt to rebrand itself as Consignia, have proved such a failure that millions more had to be spent going back to square one.

[edit] See also

• Product naming
• Ayds
• Brand implementation

[edit] References

This article does not cite any references or sources. (November 2006) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.