THE term ‘rebranding’ is frequently misunderstood by those outside the marketing sector as involving little more than the creation of a new ‘look’.
According to experts, consideration of the ‘look’ comes a fair way down the track, with a sound business case always forming the foundation for a rebranding exercise.
In the case of local brewer Gage Roads, all four of its products have had a brand overhaul since the company was established in 2005, the most recent being its Wahoo beer, repositioned in June last year.
Gage Roads national sales manager Donald Pleasance said for the brewer, the case for a rebrand was about market share and relevance.
The Wahoo bottle changed shape, its logo’s colours were altered and external packaging was aligned with the new colour scheme, while the packaging was printed in a gloss, rather than matt, format.
The rebranded products have been on the shelves since June 2011, with Gage Roads reporting Wahoo has had 25 per cent year-on-year growth since establishing the new product in the market.
“There was a slight repositioning on price point, but rebranding certainly has had an effect on sales,” Gage Roads national sales manager Donald Pleasance said.
The business’ marketing team led the push for a rebrand more than 12 months ago.
“We had a strong image with the fish and we had a good consumer following anyway, but with our competitors upgrading their packaging, we wanted it to stand out,” Mr Pleasance said.
The business’ lager, pils and IPA (pale ale) have also had their brands upgraded during the past 18 months.
“Now they are in a format that is really presentable; they stand out and consumers are happy with them,” Mr Pleasance told WA Business News.
Also in the food and beverage marketplace, the Wine Industry Association launched its rebrand last month.
Renamed Wines of Western Australia with the tagline Taste Extraordinary, the organisation aims to amalgamate the three brands that previously operated separately in industry advocacy and lobbying, education, and the consumer brand.
The rebrand process took Wines of WA 18 months, with an extensive consultation period with the 360 producers it represents and industry stakeholders to ensure all parties were happy.
“Our old brand was very corporate, and it denotes an industry association that really only looks after lobbying and advocacy for that industry, and we were so much more than that,” Wines of WA general manager Aymee Mastaglia said.
Wines of WA represents nine WA wine regions, and Ms Mastaglia said it was important to develop a set of values that sat behind the new brand that accurately represented each region.
The marketing team used words such as ‘classic’, ‘prestige’ and ‘quality’ to fuel the rebrand and went about developing a brand strong enough to stand on its own, but which could also sit behind regional and individual wine brands as a watermark.
Marketforce managing director John Driscoll said collaborating with stakeholders to develop a set of values to sit behind a brand was one of most important elements in the rebranding process.
“If you try to be a brand that doesn’t sit comfortably with your various stakeholders, then there is a disconnect between what they expect you to be and what you are, so there is a real risk you might lose some (customers) along the way,” he said.
Mr Driscoll said rebranding wasn’t just about changing a product’s logo or name.
“Any time you are going to rebrand, there has to be a sound business reason to do it. It may be to keep your brand relevant in a changing consumer world, making sure it is relevant to your consumers, making sure it is contemporary in the market you are operating in,” he said.
“The brand itself is a lot more than the icon that represents the organisation; the brand is the sum of what people are saying about you, what your employees think about you and how they behave and whether they are living the brand, what consumers are saying and what non-consumers are saying.”
There are risks to rebranding, however, and Mr Driscoll said caution was needed so as not to lose brand value.
“If you have got a lot of equity in your brand already and it is performing well, you certainly wouldn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” he said.
“If you look at some of the more long standing, well performing brands that have endured the test of time, there might be tweaks to their identity from time to time, small changes that make them more relevant and look more contemporary, but a lot of them will hold onto traditional values.”
For Gage Roads, care has been taken during the rebranding to maintain its products’ familiarity to customers.
“You want the best of both worlds, you have got to keep it in line with what it used to be, but still keep it contemporary in style,” Mr Pleasance said.
“We haven’t changed any of our products that dramatically. We kept the names, the Gage aspect of it. It is evolution, not revolution.”
