The brand makeover

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The brand makeover - at the Seattle Times
(picked up by the Associated Press)

Business: Sunday, February 6, 2000
1,066 words
The Seattle Times

The brand makeover

Dori Stubbs
Seattle Times business reporter

Coca-Cola. Nordstrom. Microsoft. Say their names or glimpse their logos, and consumers know right away what they stand for. The real thing in soft drinks. Customer service. Software innovation.

These companies are "branded" into people's minds, said Ann Bradford, branding specialist with Girvin, a low-key Seattle firm with high-profile clients like Coca-Cola, 20th Century Fox, Disney, Nordstrom and Microsoft, and new companies like HomeGrocer.com.

Branding unites identity with image - what a company says about itself with how the public perceives it.

Coca Cola, for example, uses red to show its strength and patriotism, Bradford said. Nordstrom's classic logo portrays quality. Microsoft, by its use of white space, promotes its products as easy to use.

Their brands form "an emotional resonance, an intuitive, gut-level instinct within a consumer of what the essence of the brand means," Bradford said. "They get it analytically and emotionally."

When identity and image match, a brand can create consumer loyalty. It promotes the same message whether by a street sign, Web page, logo, advertising or packaging.

But when a company says one thing and its audience hears something else, it has a branding problem, Bradford said. Consumers have trouble identifying with the business and its products.

Portland clothing retailer Norm Thompson, whose main profits come from catalog sales, realized last winter it had a branding problem.

It used three different labels in its clothing. It featured merchandise on its catalog covers and seldom tried anything new. It swore to follow its typical 60-year-old customer to the old folks' home.

The company wanted to grab a bigger share of the catalog marketplace, but believed its brand was too undefined to accomplish the goal. So, like some other established businesses in this strong economy, it sought to "rebrand," or reconnect itself with its target audience.

"Everyone had their own view of what the brand meant," said John Emrick, chief executive. "We found everybody was trying hard to interpret it as best they could, but there was no clear vision. We were getting frustrated."

A series of focus groups showed that customers thought the company wasn't quite with it, that it was selling to an older clientele. Norm Thompson was not their favorite catalog.

"It was hard to take, but healthy," Emrick said.

The company hired Girvin to overhaul its brand, from executive philosophy, copyrighting style and graphics standards to logo, colors, even Web page icons.

"We needed to pull it all together, which (Girvin) forced us to do," Emrick said. "They said every single contact with the customer needs to be consistent.'

The merchant launched its remodeled look and tone in July, a seven-month $100,000 process. By last month, its sales had increased 25 percent, Emrick reported.

"Which is pretty staggering," Emrick said. "That's not what happened in general in the catalog industry."

Customers now see concepts, not clothing, on the catalog covers. They see a single clothing label rather than three different ones.

Even Norm Thompson's target audience changed from those older than 60 to people between 45 and 51.

One of its new branding concepts is to create a sense of discovery in the pages of the catalog. A recent cover featured well-worn leather suitcases that had obviously traveled around the world. No products. No smiling models.

"Before, it was, `If that luggage isn't for sale in the catalog, why put it on the cover?' " Emrick said. "But customers were clearly more moved by this cover."

Company officials worried that its new image would alienate its older customers, but they found that those clients responded well to the changes.

"They see themselves as younger and found us relevant," Emrick said.

The rebranding's success didn't surprise Bradford.

"The company now knows what's important to it and makes decisions in alignment with those values," she said. "It shows up in ways that touch the marketplace."

Brands play a meaningful identity role for consumers, said Lance Bennett, a communications professor at the University of Washington.

People formerly identified themselves with political parties, jobs, churches and schools. But with the dawning of consumerism, they have pulled away from traditional labels and many now shape their lifestyles around brands, Bennett said.

Bradford agrees. And companies that manage their brands well keep customers from straying to the competition, she said.

But if a company isn't sure of its target audience, competitors or position in the marketplace, it may send different messages and confuse people.

In an evolving marketplace, it's important for a company to keep its brand updated, Bradford said, or customers may feel betrayed when the business enters new frontiers.

Should a retailer decide to design a Web site with a look and style different than its stores, it's sending a wrong message. This puts the brand's "vitality" at risk.

"Businesses can go off track by making decisions based on the medium, not their message and marketing," Bradford said. "It's important to define the one thing they want to be known for and let that become the beacon in all the messages it's sending to the marketplace."

Seattle company Walker Richer & Quinn, known for its software that connects PC users to networks, wanted to avoid customer confusion when it entered the high-flying e-business industry in July with Web products.

The company hired Girvin to form a new, visionary high-tech brand that stayed focused on customer service, said spokeswoman Joan Bateman.

"It's really to communicate to our customers our extended Web offerings and to help them make the transition to e-business, as well as attract new customers," Bateman said.

As part of the rebranding process, Girvin interviewed key people from owners to product managers to understand company goals, culture and abilities. It reviewed market research, checked out competitors' messages and defined the target audience.

"We created an identity for the product then tracked the image based on the identity," Bradford said. "We made a conscious effort to inform the target audience about points of distinction and credibility that the new offering brings."

Even when a brand is updated, it will survive only if a company lives its core values, Bradford said.

Norm Thompson's Emrick said his company is accomplishing this by focusing on its mission: to be its customers' favorite catalog.

"It sounds simple, but it's raised the bar," he said. "With every decision we ask if this is working to reach the point where the customer will say, `This is our favorite catalog.' "

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