Growing competition drives India Inc to brand makeover

The Murugappa peacock has gone from a staid blue to a flaming red. Some of the Taj Hotels have a stylish new name — Vivanta. And Horlicks now looks sleeker.

The past month has seen a flurry of rebranding activity. And among others who have embarked on the ‘new and improved’ way of selling are marketing communications group Mudra, real estate company Mantri and IT firm CSS Corp.

Given the stiff competition, over the last few years companies across sectors have been changing positioning, logos, and sometimes even the colour with which they are identified to stand out and offer a differentiated product to capture the mind space and market share.

Public sector lenders such as the Bank of Baroda and United Bank, consumer durables companies such as Videocon and Onida, and flag carrier Indian Airlines have changed their branding and communication architecture.

And each of these companies had a different reason for rebranding. Taj, for instance, found it necessary to segregate the hotels under some common criteria to draw absolute parallels in service, ambience and the overall experience. The group unveiled the Gateway brand for similar reasons in 2008.

“The rebranding exercise or the Brand Architecture exercise is a way of reorganizing the portfolio of hotels that constitutes Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces. Within the group, all hotels are not the same. So Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces has been segregated into distinct brands,” says Ajoy K Misra, senior VP, sales and marketing, Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces.

So while Gateway is the business hotel (not exactly no-frills ), Vivanta is one notch up — not indulgent luxury like the Palaces, but for the global cosmopolitan traveller who is a bit jaded by the typical predictability of a traditional five-star hotel. This customer appreciates luxury but in a more contemporary, minimalist and laidback way.

For Mudra, the reb r a n d i n g celebrated the agency’s 30the anniversary. Mantri timed the makeover exercise with the success of its Bangalore mall, Mantri Square — a sign that the company has arrived. Mantri has finally become more than just a local Bangalore brand with projects in other states.

Similarly, Chennai-based CSS Corp, a software services firm, timed its brand makeover with the opening of its new facility in Chennai, the company’s growth on the back of three acquisitions in the recent past and its expanded services portfolio.

For the older brands such as Murugappa, the Chennaibased bicycles-to-sugar group, and Horlicks, the malted foods brand of GSKCH, the rebranding is a way to appear contemporary without losing original identity . The changes are noticeable but not drastic.
The Murugappa Group’s executive chairman A Vellayan calls the rebranding a “contemporary rendition of the Murugappa peacock” .Red is used in branding as a colour that embodies vigour, power, passion, drive, energy and is renowned for its excellent visibility . “The clean lines and the unique lower case style in which ‘murugappa’ is written help connect with audiences through simplicity and elegance ,” says Vellayan.

Prashant Pandey, GM, Horlicks brand, at Glaxo-SmithKline Consumer Healthcare, says the association of blue and orange with their core health drink product was too strong for them to move away from. “But the whole exercise was to position Horlicks not just as a health drink brand but a larger foods brand,” he says. The company ,which also has biscuits and noodles in their portfolio, is planning to introduce more products under the Horlicks brand. It has been in India since the 1930s and has now become a Rs 1,500-crore brand.

“The timing of this rebranding activity can be linked to companies coming out of their ‘cautionary recession’, where they weren't short of cash but were being careful,” says brand consultant Harish Bijoor. His agency has done 14 brand makeovers in the first nine months of 2010 against six in all of 2009.

Consultants say growing business competitiveness is making companies rejig their brands. “Consumers are becoming increasingly demanding and the market is evolving so rapidly that companies need to constantly reinvent themselves to stay relevant,” says Sujata Keshavan, MD of Ray+Keshavan, the agency that worked on Horlicks and Mantri makeovers.
Cosmetic changes won’t help

In some cases, rebranding has worked wonders. Two years ago, Shoppers Stop underwent a rebranding exercise to reposition the retail chain from ‘premium’ to ‘bridge to luxury’ (BTL) and increase penetration among the youth.

“The BTL share of our business has moved from 2% of sales pre rebranding to almost 20% post rebranding. And customers in the age group of below 30 years, who constituted 39% of our base pre rebranding, now account for 44%,” says Vinay Bhatia, VP, marketing and loyalty, Shoppers Stop. But rebranding can also become a shallow exercise when the change is merely cosmetic.

The makeover of a host of public sector banks is a case in point. The logos became smarter, the colours were brighter and the TV commercials tugged at your heartstrings; but back at bank, little had changed. “I think the most unsuccessful rebranding was that of the Indian Airlines to Indian,” says Bijoor.