While not all brands are aiming at the same market, they all want to portray the best possible image. Yet without due care and attention to its user base, some brands get outdated, stuffy and worn out.
A rebrand strategy is therefore essential. But how do you solve a problem like Santa? Brand communication specialists Quietroom set about this task in a recently published document, with tongues firmly in cheeks and poking fun at branding and marketing speak.
The opening line of the brand refresh document sums it up. “*Santa* is a concept, not an idea,” Quietroom notes. “It’s an emotion, not a feeling. It’s both yesterday and today. And it’s tomorrow as well.”
For anyone wondering, those asterisks are pretty important. According to Quietroom, the first asterisk “reminds customers of a snowflake alighting on the eyelash of a fawn”, whilst the second asterisk “points customers to the polar star, and hence the birth of dreams.”
With a brand promise of excellence (X), measurability (M), accountability (A) and snow (S), and a ‘santa serif’ typeface, what else could be needed to give St. Nick’s brand a real refresh?
Of course, when taking a brand and entirely altering its image, you’ve got to look at your competition. Santa’s “critical asset duopoly”, according to Quietroom, are Volume of Beard fused with Extent of Fat – as well as noting sagaciously “the greatest assets of any brand are its brand assets”.
Santa’s greatest competition appears to be Hagrid, who is “entering [their] reputational space”, Henry VIII, and Brian Blessed, according to the document.
Language is also vitally important to ensure everyone, from C-level executive to shop floor worker is singing off the same hymn sheet. Quietroom stresses that familiarity needs to be avoided, particularly the “paternalistic” Father Christmas, as well as using terms such as “round and jolly” and “rosy cheeked” rather than “morbidly obese” and “half cut”.
It’s worth noting that despite the not entirely serious nature of the Santa brand refresh, rebranding exercises, when done right, can be hugely important.
Take the CRM firm formerly known as Emailvision, who changed its company name to SmartFocus back in October on the call of the new CEO, Brad Wilson.
Wilson told MarketingTech the change was essential because the previous name gave little indication as to what the company did. Indeed, it could also be seen as misleading – Emailvision had far more strings to its bow than just email marketing.
The name SmartFocus was chosen from a software firm which Emailvision ate up back in 2011 – and as Wilson noted, good names for marketing companies are at a premium these days.
Yet SmartFocus, as well as Santa, share one thing in common: a good solid product on which to build a brand strategy. What do you make of this document?
