Rebranding Disaster Lessons from Top Brands

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Do you ever rebranding your brand? Or you want to do the rebranding? Make decision rebranding is need considerations and calculations that quite mature. Because this is quite complicated job when a company decides to undertake a rebranding.

Basically rebranding brings more energy and fresh look for business. Especially if times and technology requires you to make a change, of course, by doing rebranding is a good thing to go for. Although doing rebranding is hard work but there are some advantages that you can get by doing rebranding. Here are 5 benefits if you do the rebranding:

  1. Bring the company’s image in line with its new actual focus.
    Rebranding is a concrete manifestation of the company’s actions to see new growth opportunity. When that opportunity was different from the company had previously been operating, could result leads to a shifting in the overall focus of the company, then by performing image rebranding could bring new companies with newer focus.
  2. It’s for expansion a bussines.
    By doing rebranding could allow a company for business expansion, this is because rebranding is a proofe that you open up the company to merge with another company.
  3. For differentiate from the other companies.
    Sometimes the brand in the business have in common with the company’s competitors, by do rebranding can be more individualized and communicative, of course, it is also to indicate consumers that the brand is different from its competitors.
  4. Satisfy the desire to be relevant in changing times.
    The main reason a company does rebranding is to fulfill his desire to be relevant in changing times, because sometimes it will seem old brand if it does not do be adapted with the changing times.
  5. Become more appropriate brand.
    Rebranding helps companies to be more appropriate for indicate to consumers that the brand is also following the recent change or some demands of latest trend, etc. Rebranding could also be started from product mold change, name change, or packaging change. Thus giving a more befitting look and feel to brand

As I have expressed above, there is some benefits you can get if you do the rebranding, but not least the top brand that rebranding made ​​a mistake. Based on that, in this article I’ll discuss how the top brands doing rebranding mistake with the lessons that you can learn:

1. Avoid the different domain name from the previous

Certainly, now is a trend to market products through online and not infrequently we look companies who promote their products using social media, blogs or websites. The selection of a domain name for the website is quite sensitive, if it made ​​a mistake in choosing a domain name you could guess marketing disaster will happen to the company. And now let’s take a look what happened on overstock when made ​​a mistake in choosing a domain name for rebranding.

Overstock took the decision to rebrand domain name of its website in 2011. By replacing the name of a previously Overstock.com becomes O.co which make a huge problem. Patrick Byrne told in financial analysts yesterday that: “O.co was my bad call” and that “about eight out of 13 people who were trying to visit us through O.co, eight were typing O.com”.

The consumers who are unfamiliar with overstock certainly feel confused by these changes, especially at the turn of this domain name when Christmas time, imagine how much its harm overstock with small errors. Byrne said came as Overstock reported 2011 revenue down 3% to $1.05 billion and fourth-quarter revenue down 10% to $314 million! So awful.

Rebranding Disaster Lessons

Lesson learned: Give extra attention to named your domain, don’t much different from previous. Of this overstock case, should not choose O.co but O.com, it is because Overstock.com is a previous addresses, this is due to consumers who are already accustomed to looking overstock.com will be confusion if the address changed to O.co.

2. Don’t loss your identity

Each brand has its own identity that distinguishes one brand with another. Doing rebranding is sometimes required to change the image of a brand to be more up to date, but consumers are not going to like your brand if you lost original identityy,if that happen you will be meet rebranding disaster as experienced by Tropicana and Gap. Here is an explanation why them rebranding into disaster:

a. Tropicana
At first the public knew Tropicana logo image with a straw stuck into oranges, this image has the impression that the Tropicana orange juice is fresh drink and original of the fruit. Looks like this identity not recognized by the Tropicana. Until Tropicana rebranded it in 2009 that has change his packaging with images inserted straw in a glass, the difference before and after the packaging you can see in the example image below.

Rebranding Disaster Lessons

As you can imagine, the consumers do not like being in the presence of this rebranding, the new packaging makes the impression that the new Tropicana orange juice from the fruit is not original, it’s looks like ordinary syrup.

After this rebranding sales plummeted 20% between January 1 and February 22. On February 23, less than two months after the new packaging had been on the market, Tropicana announced it would scrap the new packaging.

b. GAP
Rebranding disaster that occurred at this time GAP occurred in 2010; when GAP is over 20 years using the same logo suddenly change the logo that is almost similar to the ‘Microsoft Word Art-sequel.’ Comparative both before and after the logo you can see in the example image below

Rebranding Disaster Lessons

Consumers who see these changes give negative feedback in social media. Consumers who become fans on Facebook fans page belongs gap reveals that they are not going to buy clothes at the gap again when the new logo was not immediately replaced.

Gap executives, however, Appeared have doubts about their new logo just two days after its online debut. So it is not until a week had changed the logo again with the old logo.

Lesson learned:

  • Rebranding does not mean changing the whole identity of a long-established brand. Consumer opinion is the most important to consider when doing rebranding.
  • Trust the expert, leave it to the experts when you decide to do the rebranding, and understand beforehand what make you different than defend it even if you do rebranding repeatedly.

3. Avoid rebranding advertisment become racist

Many times a product is already embedded in the minds of consumers for certain group’s customer, such as for children only, women only or for men only. Branding image is formed certainly becoming less profitable for brands who want to expand the target market.

It is also experienced by Dr. Pepper, that is a producer diet soda who not favored by men ranging from taste to the image that seemed to drink fizzy Dr. Pepper for women only. Of course rebranding advertisement Dr. Pepper required expanding its market share.

In 2011 Dr. Pepper decided to do the rebranding, and declaring that its new 10-calorie soft drink, Dr Pepper Ten, was “not for women,” the beverage maker angered a majority of its female customers. Of course women do not like the idea of ​​promotion of Dr. Pepper’s, so many negative comment dropped this idea. But Dr. Pepper does not give up easily and quickly make amends.

Rebranding Disaster Lessons

Do you know? Based on article from Ragan.com: The brand is marketing the new 10-calorie sodas to both men and women rather successfully. Being cited as one of the company’s biggest-ever national ad campaigns, the ads for the new drinks will target both sexes and play off the theme of learning to compromise via a shared love for the 10-calorie beverages. Rebranding disaster but with happy ending is so sweet right? 🙂

Lesson learned: Do not go too far with a group of people considers inappropriate for your product, make your rebranding can be enjoyed by everyone.

Conclusion

Rebranding often required by the brand to make the brand image is aesthetically relevant to the changing times. But mistakes can happen to everyone, but like what proverb say “experience is the best teacher”, therefore in this article I reveal the top brand that ever made a mistake in the rebranding they do, and of course a lot of lessons that you can you learn to avoid the same error during rebranding. Hope this article will help you to choose the right way when do rebranding.

What do you think? Have you ever done rebranding? What successes or tips that you can share? Please leave your questions and comments in the comment box below.

– Written by Ratih –

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  1. […] tips will help you build your brand with success in mind and avoid some of the costly failures other businesses have experienced when branding and […]

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