Rebranding an enterprise is fraught with risk.

You risk losing the brand identity you have, along with current customers, distribution channels, recognition, and so on, banking on building a larger brand in the future.

It will not happen without significant risk and cost.

Let’s get the definition of ‘rebrand’ right.

We are  not talking about a simple pack change here, but a ‘clean sheet of paper’ rebrand.

A seemingly simple pack change is hard enough, but pales into insignificance against a total rebrand, which goes to the core of the value delivered by the brand to its customers.

Years ago I was tasked to rebrand a well known albeit small FMCG brand, ‘Tandaco’. It had in its portfolio several ingredient products used by serious and traditional cooks,  suet,  yeast,  stuffing mix and breadcrumbs. The task was to rebrand into a new brand ‘Supercook,’ which had a wider range of products that were intended to be licenced from the UK.

Having previously been badly bitten by what appeared to be a simple repackaging exercise on Tandaco Stuffing Mix, told in this post,  I was very wary of the larger exercise. While I opposed the whole exercise, as I failed to see any additional value for consumers, and considerable risk, I was convinced I had done everything humanly possible to make it work.

I set out to do this ‘by the numbers,’ to ensure as far as possible that mistakes previously made were not repeated. It was the early eighties, so market research was ‘clunky’ at best, and by comparison to today, positively prehistoric. Nevertheless, there was a lot of research done aimed at addressing what I saw as the stumbling blocks;

• How did we translate the positive feelings of that small group of current buyers of Tandaco to the new brand Supercook?
• How did we ensure that the new brand was not left on the shelf due to non recognition, repeating the mistake made previously with the redesign of the stuffing mix, noted above.
• What brand takeaway did we want to attach to the new Supercook brand?
• Which additional products could be fitted under the umbrella, that would add to the total volumes of that particular sub category in supermarkets? There were some expectations here based on the British experience, but it seemed to me that potential range extensions were going to have to take share from an existing product, as category expansion seemed unlikely.
• What was the profile of the key group of purchasers who made up the bulk of the volume currently, and would they ‘stick’ when the new brand was introduced? Indeed, would they buy some of the range  extensions in preference to the existing competition, and why?
• How would the brand change impact on consumers, how did it add any value to them. My view, expressed probably too loudly for the relatively junior person I was at the time, was that the whole exercise was driven by someone in an office who had a good idea one morning, and no engagement in the marketplace.

There were also marketing management challenges that had to be addressed.

• Designers and advertising creative personnel needed to be thoroughly briefed and on board with the strategies, reasons for the change, and what we sought to achieve
• Internal management record keeping from the accounting, through the production management and procurement processes needed to be keyed into the changeover timetables, and accommodating of record changes and allowances made for the inevitable one off changeover costs that would emerge.
• Sales personnel and importantly customer , supermarket buyers needed similar timetables.
• Most importantly, consumers had to be informed and engaged in the new brand as it was rolled out.
• Was there enough budget to do all of the above?

While I believed at the time I had crossed every ‘t’ and dotted every ‘I,’ the change turned out to be a silly idea, and was reversed a couple of years later, after my departure.

At the time of the change, Cerebos was owned by British Multinational RHM, which had slowly bought up the Australian owned businesses over a period of years, and had global aspirations. It has since been passed around like a parcel at a 5 year olds birthday party. The current owner being Kraft Heinz, who acquired it at the beginning of 2018 from Japanese brewer Suntory.  Given the recent disastrous performance by Kraft Heinz, Cerebos is most likely back on the market as Kraft Heinz scrambles to improve their  balance sheet.

A final word of caution. I have seen a ‘rebrand’ become the excuse for all sorts of other changes, not associated with adding value to customers. These are to be avoided at any cost.