Companies don new avatars to strengthen brand recall

CHENNAI: It seems its season for re-branding. Thanks, perhaps, to a clear positive shift in sentiments and an improvement in economic conditions, several brands have chosen this time to rebrand themselves, and reinforce their brand recall in customers' minds.
From multinational companies like Renault and Abbott, to homegrown brands like TVS Tyres, Parag Milk Foods and Take Solutions, several companies have established a new identity over the last few weeks, hoping for better recall with customers.While Renault has revamped its presence online, brands like TVS Tyres and Parag Milk Foods have reworked their logos to retain some 'signature' aspects of the brand while bringing in new elements on to the logos, and companies like Abbott or 7up have come out with new brand positioning based on what they stand for and whom they want to target.
While rebranding as a concept is not new, the cycle time has reduced now, experts say. "Earlier it was 40 years, then it gradually came down to 10 years and now, companies rebrand themselves once in two years," says branding consultant Harish Bijoor. His branding and business strategy company Harish Bijoor Consults Inc has seen twice as much business this year compared with last year, he says. The company worked on 21 brands in 2013-14 and is now working on 41 branding exercises for 2015.
"Companies across sectors, both business-to-business and business-to-consumer, are realizing that consumers today are fickle and impatient. Earlier, an old brand was considered reliable, now it is looked at as old. Companies are hence reinventing themselves to keep up with the expectations of the new customer, and are doing it more often than earlier," Bijoor says.
Branding is happening not just with the logo and tagline; companies are refurbishing themselves. Technology solutions provider TAKE Solutions has now taken its life-sciences solutions arm as a separate brand called 'Navitas'. "We wanted a specialized go-to market strategy and wanted a unique branding for the services we offer. The value proposition we offer in this segment is deep knowledge and we wanted to differentiate it from other IT services and hence chose to rebrand the segment," said Srinivasan H R, vice-chairman and MD of TAKE Solutions and chairman of Navitas.
"There is greater awareness about branding and we are having many companies discussing their plans with us. These are not necessarily just cosmetic changes but changes on positioning of the company .Rebranding is now a soulsearching exercise of sorts where a company wants to think of what it stands for and how it has to position itself and focus on the identity it wants to carry," Ramanujam Sridhar, founder and CEO of BrandComm, a branding and communications firm.