Rebranding Done Right & Wrong

Over the last little while 2 rebrand initiatives caught my attention. One impressed me & the other left me with questions.

The one that impressed me was Reebok! For so long, Reebok seemed to be struggling to find its place among the heavy hitters, like Nike & Adidas. In fact, prior to this rebrand, or shall I say reebrand, Reebok was competing on price offering steep discounts to retailers impacting their revenue and cheapening the brand!

But, I think they have finally found their place!

With Nike owning authentic athletic performance (if you have a body you're an athlete) and Adidas representing reaching & smashing your goals, there's no one owning the fun of sports.

The new positioning allows Reebok to stand tall, differentiated from the rest as the athletic brand that stands for the fun of sports!

I love it! It's purposeful, simple, unique and motivating. Plus it's a place Nike & Adidas will never go, and if they did, it would be so off brand that it would be a short-sighted mistake on their part! This new positioning really gives something consumers can connect with!

Best of all, Reebok is innovating new products, like the Easytone, which helps you tone your butt while doing everyday activities, and ZigTech (pictured above), which is an innovative shoe technology that transfers energy from the heel to the front of the foot. It is products like these that begin to substantiate Reebok's new positioning! I mean what's the point of rebranding if you have nothing to show for it and prove that you are changing like the repositioning implies!

To top it off, it's working! Sales rose 4% in North America as a response to this rebranding effort. This is Reebok's largest sales increase in 4 years! It has even been able to capture a 1.1 point increase, to 3.7%, in market share in the last quarter since its low of 2.6%.

I'm excited to see what else Reebok does with their new positioning to set it in stone and really own the fun of sports!

Ok, so the brand that threw me through a loop was Comcast! They have decided to rename all their services Xfinity, while keeping the company named Comcast. Best of all they are not, and I repeat NOT, launching any improvements/changes/etc. to their services except for the name.

In fact, I read on the Comcast blog that "XFINITY represents the future of our company and it’s a promise to customers that we’ll keep innovating". It's a promise - with this launch it seems like an empty promise. Where are the plans for innovation, if there are none coming out with the name? And more channels don't count.

Why change the name at all if people already know who Comcast is? Sure there may have been some hiccups with a viral video of a Comcast technician napping on a customer's couch, but now with changing the name it seems like Comcast is trying to hide something, which only weakens the brand value further leaving customers questioning their trust for Comcast.

When you go to rebrand your organization/product/service, make sure you have a good reason! Reebok had a good reason - our brand is not driving demand which is impacting our margins - okay time for a rebrand! But they didn't go as far as Comcast by renaming all its existing shoes with the promise they will get better in the future! Rather, they invested in innovation and developed new porducts that substantiate its new brand purpose.

Xfinity doesn't even have a purpose guiding it other than innovation - does this mean Comcast wasn't already innovating? They should have considered the rationale behind the new name, how will it improve the business, and how will they change their service offering to make that improvement?

In fact, when I was looking for an Xfinity logo for this post, I came across this consumer generated Xfinity "ad":

This is very telling of the consumer response of this pitiful and meaningless rebrand. Even Verizon is making a point to acknowledge how silly this undertaking by Comcast is:

So, I recommend that if you are thinking of rebranding, do like Reebok. Have purpose behind your rebrand. Make it meaningful and relevant to your customers through innovation and/or improvement. This begins to prove your commitment to the rebrand establishing trust. Don't just do it for the sake of change, or you risk confusing consumers resulting in a devalued brand!