Remake, remodel and rebrand

It’s not often a company’s rebranding efforts hits the headlines and when it does, it will more often than not be for all the wrong reasons.

So, Abrdn. In case you are wondering what happened to the letter ‘e’ in that name, this was exactly why the rebranding of investment group Standard Life Aberdeen caused a stir. ‘C’mn Adrdn, abndn this clunky nee name nonsense’ ran the Guardian’ while the FT said the new name was ‘disemvoweled’.

It was a prime example of what can go wrong when a company hopes to relaunch itself in the eyes of its customers. Abrdn now adds its redacted name to a long list of failed attempts to seamlessly switch corporate personas.

At least in terms of media opprobrium, the gambling sector has avoided that particular fate. Which is good news because the sector has seen something of a flurry of big name rebrands in recent times.

Given the current backdrop of an industry in flux, particularly when it comes to M&A and other corporate activity, this activity is perhaps not unexpected.

Typical of these is the name change at what was GVC. Now Entain, Jay Dossetter, head of ESG and the press office, says the company opted on a rebrand due to the “fundamental changes that the business had undertaken”. “It wasn’t just about a new name and logo but was symbolic of the refreshed long-term corporate strategy and management team,” he says. “It marked a new chapter in the group’s history.”

This articulates just some of the many reasons why a company goes down the path of a rebrand, suggests Peter Matthews, managing director of digital brand agency Nucleus.

These can include trademark problems in a key market which can lead to a legal need to change name, a merger where a new name is deemed more acceptable than retaining one or another brand, or a situation where a brand is simply “tired” and where a business needs reinvigoration in order to both retain existing customer and acquire new ones, often via the launch of a new product or service proposition.

Name recognition

A name change is perhaps the trickiest area that a company can tackle. Entain is the most high-profile example in the sector since the Flutter Entertainment relaunch two years’ ago. That move was hailed at the time by chief executive Peter Jackson as a “great opportunity to better reflect the global nature of our organisation and the diverse set of challenger brands we have operating around the world”.

Dossetter says there were multiple challenges in choosing the Entain name. “Some were very practical considerations around IP and ensuring URLs, social media handles and the like were available,” he says.

“But far more important was creating something that could convey a sense of what our business is about, that our people could get behind and that could be readily understood by the outside world. We had a core team who looked at a number of options; ultimately Entain as a corporate identity was something that really resonated with us.”

Matthews says the new name for a company has to pass a number of hurdles, including being distinctive, relevant, memorable, pronounceable in various languages, devoid of double-meanings and be protectable by trademarks in each key market. “Most of our naming work is the result of failed DIY attempts by clients or brand agencies who lack the process and expertise to do this properly,” he adds.

Even if a full-on name change isn’t part of the rebranding, missteps can still be made by the unwary. Jo Dennis, who is a consultant at design and branding consultancy Rokker and MD at creative design agency Random Colour Animal, says that a common mistake is to do too little.

“I think the biggest mistake would be to think that colouring in something differently or simply shifting something does anything,” she says. “A B2B brand has to look at how a rebrand will fit a specific goal. There has to be a commercial goal. Otherwise, it is just a cost. There needs to be a solid reason for a rebrand and those reasons can be varied.”

Harry Lang, marketing director at Buzz Bingo, agrees that a safety-first instinct can leave the ‘what’s the point?’ question lingering unanswered. “You can spend lots of time and money doing something that just won’t be noticed, or worse, (people) won’t give a damn about. A big dose of bravery is often what takes a brand project from ‘meh’ to greatness.”

Harry Lang, Buzz Bingo

In fact, in the gaming sector there have been a number of subtle brand changes in recent months including Evolution dropping Gaming from their name and Betgenius morphing into Genius Sports. Both of these were accompanied by large corporate manoeuvres – a game-changing piece of M&A in the case of the first and a NYSE float for the second.

Another recent example of what would appear to be a slight change comes with Chalkline which recently dropped Sports from its name. Dan Kustelski, chief executive and founder, says the name change has been made in response to changed circumstances in the US.

“When we started the business in 2016 as Chalkline Sports, we were focused on the impending regulation of sports betting in the US,” he says. “Since then, the market has evolved, and Chalkline’s product line has evolved to meet the needs of the market. Our engagement level around our free-play and real money casino and lotto-style sports games led us pretty clearly to our rebrand.”

Clicking refresh

In B2C there is perhaps more of an impetus to understand how the consumer views the brand and how any potential changes might affect that relationship. But Lang points out that when it comes to brand perceptions, “everything is subjective” and when it comes to B2B and customer research, listening to current clients “can be dangerous”.

Too much research into what customers think – whether current or future – can also be damaging when it comes to more innovative ideas, suggests Matthews. “It takes a brave CMO to ignore that kind of data,” says Matthews. “But truly innovative companies look further ahead than consumers can see.”

Joshua van Raalte, founder of brand consultancy Brazil, says the key to working with a client is to match the two sides of the equation. “Typically, the questions are understanding what their vision is as a business, where do they think they are going and when we marry it up with what their customers say we can make recommendations accordingly.”

Joshua Van Raalte, Brazil

Of equal importance to the outside perceptions of a company rebrand are the views of the internal audience. “Listening to team members who have a deep customer understanding, often in the early brand workshops and thus vesting them in the project, is enormously powerful,” Lang says.

While a rebrand is aimed at a range of audiences, Dossetter points out that “of course, high on that list are our people”. “It was essential that Entain is a corporate brand that they take pride in,” he adds.

Now more than ever this last aspect has a resonance. The work-from-home imperative in the past year or more with people stuck at a home office desk or kitchen table has led to many more employees “living the brands all the time”, says Dennis. “We now have a world where digital was all we had – for a year – and I think when it comes to brand and marketing, it has highlighted the need to stand out,” she says.

“I do think we have seen more businesses think about what they have been doing and that has facilitated some sort of change,” says Van Raalte.

This is perhaps the crux of the branding issue. How to stand out is always at the heart of any branding discussion and it will often come at the end of a discussion around the competition. Often, as Dennis says, it comes down to the question “why do they do things better than we do?” And that is a wider question than can be answered by any rebranding.