Know-How Exchange : Branding

Mirah,

Take a look at Danaher Corporation (DHR). They are a holding company with diverse holdings who developed a "brand" after the fact and perform very strongly now in the market.

When considering the "brand" of the holding company, there are a couple considerations. First, what is it that holding company wants to be? The brand ties to the company vision and mission. Based on that, brand identity and brand personality is developed. Brand equity is partly brand recognition and partly checking for prevalence of understanding of brand identity.

Prior to re-branding, the process of developing the vision and mission and recognizing the differences from the previous vision and mission is important. To drive the re-brand efforts, you need to know where you're coming from (old vision/mission/brand) and where you're going (new vision/mission/brand). Also important to understand is that even if you had no formal statement of vision/mission/brand prevision, you had a perceived vision/mission/brand. In checking brand equity, you will learn what that is today. Checking brand equity today also gives you the brand recognition numbers so that you can do an in-process check to make sure your re-branding efforts don't rob you of brand recognition. If you see this slipping, then you must change your tactics. More on this later.

After you establish your path from old vision/mission/brand to new vision/mission/brand, you develop the brand identity, and brand rules - those that you ultimately want to achieve. With that in place, you can build a transition plan. Re-branding is not a fast process; it takes time because you are building multiple associations in the minds of the consumers. The first is to introduce the new brand as a sub-entity under the present brand. When brand recognition is established for the sub-entity, then you elevate the old brand/new brand to an equity position and establish recognition. Penultimately, you release the new brand with the former brand as a sub-entity. And then as recognition for the new brand as subordinate is established, finally, you can remove the old brand.

As an example of how this works, let's take a company - MarketingProfs. Let's say that MarketingProfs is a holding company and the held companies are Mirah Company, Wayde Company, and Phil Company. MarketingProfs decides to re-brand such that Mirah, Wayde, and Phil become divisions under MarketingProfs and no longer separate companies. MP checks brand equity of the old brand for itself and the three companies and then establishes vision/mission/brand for the new company. The first move would be something like MIRAH COMPANY on top with "A MarketingProfs Company" under it in smaller letters - almost parenthetic. When people get used to seeing that, then it becomes MIRAH COMPANY - A MARKETINGPROFS COMPANY. Next is MARKETINGPROFS with Mirah Company under that in smaller letters. We might take one more step and go with MARKETINGPROFS with Mirah Division under that in smaller letters. And then finally, just MarketingProfs. All the while, we would be checking brand equity to see where we are. If we see that brand recognition was slipping along the way, then we can revert back a step or extend the length and take action to solidify the impression. Some of these steps can be skipped or shortened significantly with some risk of loss of brand recognition. This depends on how much association is already established and how different the new vision/mission/brand is from the old. Additionally, if the old vision/mission/brand has little or no equity for neither the holding company nor the held companies, little transition is needed and efforts can be aligned to establishing vision/mission/brand.

Accompanying the changes would be steps to inform customers and investors of the strategy - where the company is going and why. "WHY" is important. These steps would be face-to-face visits, customer letters, press releases, press conferences, stockholder calls, etc. Keys to the success includes two important elements. First, when a change is made to a new stage, old materials - collateral, business cards, letterhead, etc - must be purged. Having both versions at the same time confuses the situation and makes the transition harder and longer. A second key is to have hard, fast, and rigid brand rules. Consistency is key so that the transition time is minimized. If brand recognition slips along the way, review of these keys is part of the remedy.

I hope this helps.

Wayde