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Born-again brands

Clint Witchalls

Tuesday, 1st July 2008

Clint Witchalls looks at what brand managers have to do to keep their products in tune with the zeitgeist

Sales of Hummers are down. The mega gas-guzzlers that became associated with the boo-yah! patriotism that surged through America just after the Gulf war, are no longer in step with the zeitgeist. Americans have lost their appetite for the war, oil prices have gone stratospheric and the current trend is towards sustainability. The tide has changed and the Hummer hasn’t kept up. As a result General Motors, the company that has owned the brand since 1998, has put it up for sale.

Trends can change quickly and brands that are everybody’s darling today can be a pariah tomorrow. Firms should continuously check the health of their brand by asking two questions: how relevant is my brand? And, how differentiated is it? Of the two, Nick Keppel- Palmer, head of consultancy at brand agency Wolff Olins, says that the second is the most important. ‘If you’re making salads at 3,000 calories a pop and the nation is dying of obesity, that would suggest to me that perhaps what you’re doing is not relevant, even if it is different,’ he says – taking a swipe at McDonald’s attempt at brand reinvention.

The challenge is to differentiate your brand while maintaining its relevance. Declaring that your firm is ‘going green’, for example, is not very compelling to consumers or to shareholders, because it’s what you should be doing anyway. ‘There’s a big swathe of companies that have jumped on this ethical eco-movement without thinking what they are going to do differently,’ says Keppel-Palmer. ‘What brands have to do to evolve is to understand themselves very well and understand the market that they’re operating in. McDonald’s is never going to become the purveyor of healthy foods.’