Know-How Exchange : Branding

If you want confidential advice and this is an important issue for you, you might want to try 911 Marketing Help. It's a new service of MarketingProfs that provides fast, confidential answers to marketing questions. There's a small fee, but it's a real bargain when you consider that you get one-on-one attention from some of the top marketing minds in the world.

Right now the primary target audience for 911 Marketing Help is the US, but there are consultants from all over the world (including at least one who has spent a bunch of time in the UK) and many who have experience in tech businesses and with tech products.

It's worth checking out for an issue like yours. The real answer to your question could be very much dependent on some specifics, and you're probably right to not share those in a public forum. The 911 Marketing Help experts have all signed a blanket NDA, and all communication would be in a password protected workspace.

Good luck.

Cheers for your comments guys. However i don't think i have explained myself very well. Some background....

The product is actually a very good and technologically sound solution to a problem that was tendered some 15 years ago. My company won the contract to develop the product after issues with the original company contracted to develop a solution. It is a replacement for a outdated system and in all honesty it simply blows it out of the water!

However it has not been without its problems, hardware and software issues have crept up but these have been rectified in incremental fixes. The problem is that we have produced something that our customers asked for, but some regular users find issues due to;
a. it being a fairly complex system
b. a lack of technical knowledge and efficient training (3rd party company)
c. unrealistic expectations (again i can't go in to detail here due to confidentiality)
and d. hearsay tells them that previous iterations were problematic so they have negative pre-conceived views of the product before they use it

I was simply thinking that rebranding the next iteration, which is a significant improvement on previous releases could encompass all these issues i.e. focus groups with our users, customers, engineers etc. a marketing, p.r and training strategy, amongst other things (please excuse me if I'm speaking rubbish I'm desperately trying to understand the concept of rebranding)

Again if you think i'm barking up the wrong tree... let me know

None of the facts you cite addresses the real issue ... which is how your target audience perceives the brand. Your problem isn't the technical stuff; it's what's in the minds of your target audience. And that's why rebranding isn't a good solution. The company is the same company that has all this baggage, and any product in the same category from that company is going to be tainted with that image.

A brand exists in the minds of the target audience, not in a company memorandum or an ad produced by your advertising agency. Changing a brand image is a very difficult thing to do. The path to marketing heaven is littered with the bodies of marketers who thought they could pull it off.

I hope you don't go that route ... for your sake. Listen to what the experts are telling you. Branding is NOT about telling people your story. It's about what people think (about the brand) and what their experiences have been. If they think there are problems, then it doesn't matter whether the problems are real or imagined, or if they've been resolved or not. It's about what they think ... in the deep recesses of their collective brain.

"Your problem isn't the technical stuff; it's what's in the minds of your target audience"

I was under the impression that rebranding was for this type of problem? If not i'm mistaken, as i said i'm an engineer and was just looking for ideas to put to our VP, maybe i'll go down another path. Cheers Guys

The problem seems to be that we understand the word "rebranding" differently. For marketers "rebranding" is taking a product, with or without some minor modifications, and giving it a new image ... as though it's not really the same thing.

You're thinking of "rebranding" as giving a new product a new name and hoping that will let you sidestep the tarnished image of a predecessor brand.

How about this approach: Keep the old product (and brand identity), and then add a new product, with a new brand name and identity, at a premium price with all the bug fixes AND a few new functional features that will make it a better value for your customers.

Promote the "old" brand as the standard solution ... proven in the marketplace ... and the "new" brand as a superior solution with specific new benefits.

Whilst i agree with what you're saying, existing customers are provided with the new releases as firmware/hardware/software upgrades. The aim here is to work on it's reputation so that we can attract new customers and so that existing and potential users will shift their attitude to more positive.

Existing users are still using the previous release and some potential users have not even used the product yet but have negative views due to misinformation, hearsay and misunderstanding of the products capabilities and objectives.

I want to address these issues and some of the technical issues in one swoop, as a joint marketing/engineering effort i.e. work on the reputation, image and customer needs through marketing and address these through engineering.

P.s. this is not a commercially available product, you couldn't go into the shops and buy it...

It's becoming increasingly clear that you are unlikely to get what you need here. You need some one-on-one consulting on branding. There are too many unknowns for us to solve your problem on this forum ... especially without knowing the details, and we could do you a real disservice by making wrong assumptions and sending you down the wrong path.

You can either go to 911 Marketing Help or contact me offline and I'll give you a few recommendations/suggestions ... including some of the experts on this forum.