Stories...are genuinely symbiotic organisms that we live with, that allow human beings to advance." - Neil Gaiman on How Stories Last.
We often tell ourselves different stories while making sense of the world around us. But as Gaiman points out, stories have been living through ages. The characters change, their struggles change, their reward to go through adventure changes, but the stories are pretty much categorized into these 6 broad themes:
Good vs. evil
Love
Redemption
Courage and perseverance
Coming of age
Revenge
Since the themes are pretty much defined, what matters then is “ How you tell the story”
Stories are everywhere. But today, we will focus on the stories that brands tell us when they rebrand. Before we begin, iff you are new here, you might want to check my earlier post #1 Being a D2C brand in a B2C world. If you like pls subscribe to get a biweekly newsletter. Check out the story about this newletter here.
Read on :
#2 Rebranding for Dummies
"Hey, did you read about the rebranding medium did? "
"Ah, who cares? It's their 3rd time in 5 years. "
"Okay, how about Accenture? "
"Yep, they rebranded again, too."
"I never get why companies spend so much time, money, and resources in a wasteful exercise."
Who are we to say? Hey, nice haircut btw.
Thanks, my new girlfriend likes it this way.
Haha, so you rebranded yourself for your new audience?
A conversation between two friends talking about rebranding. In today's post, we will see how and why companies by looking at a few recent cases.
We often use the words Mission, Vision, Values & Purpose interchangeably. But these terms are the core of a brand’s existence. As explained in this article, the meanings of these terms are :
• Purpose: Why do they exist?
• Vision: What future do they want to help create?
• Mission: How do they create that future?
• Values: Who are they? How do they work?
Ultimately, it boils down to what they care about & how they will be who they want to be, pretty much like we all as individuals aspire to do. Let’s look at two recent rebranding exercises done for Chumbak and Vi.
Chumbak - Oye whatsup?
As on their official blog post welcoming the new identity, in 10 years, Chumbak went from being a playful, young, inspired by Indian culture brand who made quirky souvenirs to a global brand inspired by cultures around the world while expanding its product line to lifestyle offerings. Strangely, Chumbak started with fridge magnets as in their About Us in 2013 I extracted from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine :
Chumbak was born out of love for India and the love of travel. Our original plan was to have only fridge magnets, but somewhere along the way, Chumbak became a lot more than just that! Chumbak became a way to experience a little bit of India, the India that we see every day... in the form of fridge magnets, keychains, t-shirts, pens, notebooks, and various other stuff.
If you love to travel as much as we do, you’ll love Chumbak as well. Come explore your world with us.
Now, have a look at two sides of the above image one by one. The left side is old but young Chumbak, and the right one is the new mature Chumbak.
If we try to define Purpose, Vision, Mission and Values from 2010 to now :
Purpose
[2010] to provide a fun, usable, and distinctively designed products for everyday people
[2020] to brighten up your living space, your office, and your wardrobe, drawing inspiration from cultures and art forms from around the world, blended with a fun, colorful, and modern aesthetic that is joyful and uplifting
Mission
[2010] to redefine how India is represented
[2020] to be an evolved and globally relevant, design-led lifestyle brand
Vision
[2010] to fill the void of beautifully designed handcrafted products that could be used as accessories
[2020] They want to create a brand that can help customers grow with them. Everything they do is towards making the customer feel positive, creative and confident.
The new logo certainly gives that serious tone to the statement.
Values
[2010] and [2020] Everything we create at Chumbak is true to our 5 brand pillars of Wit, Warmth, Honesty, Spontaneity & Community.
Their values don’t seem to have changed much, and come to think of it, why would they?
Vi - Vodafone + Idea or what??
When mergers and acquisitions happen, rebranding can happen in three ways :
Creating a combined identity
Creating an altogether new identity
Making one identity dominant over other
Vodafone was an urbane, upmarket brand. Idea was a more rustic, lower-middle one. Their coming together necessitated a new avatar. In fact, it should have come much earlier, said Sandeep Goyal, chairman, Mogae Media, a Mumbai-based marketing and communication agency.
Okay, let’s watch probably the last one of the ZooZoo ads released in April 2020 before Vodafone decided to give them away.
And one from Idea’s iconic “What an Idea sirjee” ad series in Feb 2020.
To this :
Seriously, we have so much to blame 2020 is for. Vi definitely tops my list of rebranding exercise that failed to leverage individual brand identities and merge them into something unique. According to the design brief, they wanted to maintain the legacy of both the brands while being positioned to meet ever-changing customer needs. Sure they got the tagline right, “Together for Tomorrow,” but the rebranding feels lazy at best.
Imagine the discussion on the table while discussing new ideas for this new identity:
Scenario 1: Let’s create something that values both for as it would look when Vodafone Zoozoos were promoting Walk and Talk campaign or “What an Idea, sirjee” campaign.
Scenario 2: Let’s maintain the legacy but give it a completely fresh look.
Scenario 3: Let’s just use the first two letters, call it Vi and pronounce it as We to show we are together ( in their own minds of course). The inverted I idea is not even new. Check out Incredible India’s logo.
And guess what? Scenario 3 won. Look what Ashish Khazanchi, Managing Partner at Enormous, has to say -
“Vodafone as a brand has historically excelled in their design thinking; this logo seems to have been made by lawyers in their free time more than by some capable designers. A good design should have brought the values of the two brands together. The earthiness of idea and the emotional connection of Vodafone. This one has all the desirable qualities that intravenous (iv) serum brand should have had, with the alphabets reversed, of course,” he said.
There are some good reviews; also, you can check them here.
It is always easier to say the identity and design are a matter of preference, and the choice to like something or not is subjective. As Paul Graham says in one of his essays,
One problem with saying there's no such thing as good taste is that it also means there's no such thing as good art. If there were good art, then people who liked it would have better taste than people who didn't. So if you discard taste, you also have to discard the idea of art being good and artists being good at making it.
And sometimes, while creating these identities, brands often trade the dirty hard work of actually creating something unique with mere words to define and support a lazy piece of work. Japanese have a tradition of drinking tea in broken or very raw made cups. The idea is to not let the appearance of a cup bias your opinion about the taste of tea. With the rise of mass consumption of artwork through the internet, the meaning is getting lost somewhere in the way how you frame that artwork or what caption you put, or what filter you apply. These are support functions, just like the description given behind all the rebranding exercises. Some exercises create coherence between what the brand is saying it is and what it actually is. Some simply just talk aloud.
For any comments or discussions, please feel free to reach out. And if you think you’d like to read more of these posts on Storytelling, Content, Creativity, Business, and everything in between, you know what to do 👇 :