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How effective is rebranding, really?
I saw a commercial for high fructose corn syrup last night, and they are trying to rebrand it as 'corn sugar.' I don't think that a rebranding effort will work to sway public opinion of the product at hand, but it made me think about rebranding as a practice. How effective are rebranding efforts usually? What makes for a successful (or unsuccessful) effort?
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5 Answers
Greg is making a very good point about brand promise. Rebranding is really repositioning. In positioning, we work to have our customers and others think about us in the way we want them to think about us. We give them our differentiation, the reason to buy and our promise of performance. Sometimes, that positioning does not resonate, or it may become stale over time because of market changes, including competitive positioning that marginalizes us.
There is growing concern over obesity and corn syrup in refined products, particularly in the US. Changing the reference from corn syrup to corn sugar is a PR effort to move the message. It is an attempt--very lame, in my opinion--at repositioning. Repositioning is not just about changing words, but more fundamentally changing the performance and product to meet the needs that the original positioning did not achieve. I am not saying that it might not work. In the crazy government regulatory system, they might know that regulators are after corn syrup on packaging or that parents are being told to look for it. This is a "bait and switch". It may work, but let's not dignify it by calling it rebranding.
Rebranding can work if the organization really changes the attributes and associations of the product or service to meet the needs of the market. In the case of corn syrup, the analogy I would use is a woman who changes her name after marriage to that of her husband's. Some people may no longer be able to find her or identify her, but she is still there, still the same person, just with a different name.
No one is trying to re-brand high-fructose corn syrup. They are using a comparison to table suger (which it is basically) in order to combat negative perceptions that it's bad for you.
Re-branding only works with a substantive change in the product or service which adds greater value for the consumer.
Rebranding, by definition, involves creating new names and associations for a product to develop a new position in the eyes of stakeholders and consumers. So, I have to disagree when you say that HFCS isn't being rebranded. It most definitely is undergoing a change in branding to shed its contentious health implications.
This isn't the point of Rachel's question though.
To address the real question at hand, the efficacy of rebranding efforts... I'd have to say that I agree that it can only be effective if you add a greater value for your consumers. Rebranding generally happens when the brand image fails for some reason, why mess with a successful image? So, I think a successful effort relies on research and planning. You need to know what values you want to provide your audience and center your new image the improvements you want to make. You need to have a solid view of what you want to be, and provide it in a way that is in line with your new goals. It is very much like any other marketing strategy, you need to have a clear, thoughtful vision and strong execution.
Being able to recognize and understand what a rebranding effort (or even a brand process) is or is not is totally the point. If for no other reason than the question is based on a conversation about a comparison of two simliar products, used in a commercial context, which are not the same product and neither of which is an actual brand. They are both a commodity product, only one of which is regularly bought by the public at large.
Likewise, your definition is totally confused, incomplete and fails to define what a real brand is. Branding is a process. It is not a result or a hard and fast construct.
Rebranding doesn't need failure in order to prove itself as a necessary tactical alternative. You also confuse image with brand, they are not the same thing. And one would hope that professional marketers and/or consumer researchers would engage in better research and planning - that's simply table stakes. Also, tinkering with brand elements such as name, logo, etc..is also not rebranding per se. Neither is positioning in and of itself. You also cannot talk about rebranding unless you also consider the consumer side of the equation which ultimately defines the brand to begin with.
You don't "provide values" to an audience either. You determine the values of your target market and adopt them into your branding efforts. Positioning is also an ongoing process and both continue over the life of the product.
After working with branding and rebranding efforts for nearly 30 years, I can tell you from first-hand experience it is never easy and usually overkill. The biggest problem is when a product has a modicum of success then the strategy that facilitated it gets benched in favor of engaging in tactics that, more times than not, bear no relationship to the original strategy whatsoever.
Finally, what "you want" is totally irrelevant. What the market wants and/or demands (along with your ability to uncover and subsidize that want) is the driver of your products success. And it is hardly like any other marketing strategy. The variables at play are absolutely different, not the least of which is that you have a history in the market that you are also competing with.
Wow. Is it getting hot in here?
At the risk of over simplifying, however to address your question Rachel, branding involves a company or institution making promise. That institution or company then becomes a promise delivery system. Consumers have good or bad experiences with a company, product or "brand" and they assess whether the promise is being delivered. Those experiences in the mind of the consumer are the “brand”—literally burned into the brain like a branding iron was used to mark cattle.
So, rebranding works when you have a new promise that you can actually deliver. A new product that offers to do something amazing in your life as a consumer is an example of a new promise.
When the Corn Refiners Association says “fine in moderation” in the TV spots, that is probably true. The problem is that most manufacturers of packaged food don’t use it in moderation when they make their products. It’s often listed as the second or third ingredient (and sometimes both).
And I believe that is the real root of the consumer backlash. Consumers don’t get to choose how much of the “corn sugar” goes in or on their food. In my mind, the Corn Refiners Association is simply trying to make a promise they cannot keep. Until they can influence manufactures to reformulate the way high fructose corn syrup is used to make food, they are making claims that seem to approach deception.
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