Brand Innovation: More than Just a Logo Change

It’s All about New Products, Services, and Process-efficiencies that Address Customers’ True Needs
Brand innovation, affectionately known in the marketing space as, “rebranding” or “brand repositioning”, is a practice that has been around for a very long time. It is central to achieving growth targets and for businesses looking to pivot their business models.
A significant number of major South African entities are on a “rebranding” spree and are “reinventing” or “innovating” themselves — as per their communication messages. However, brand innovation or rebranding — in its stricter, more sincere sense, is more than just a change in a brand’s visual identifiers.
Both brand and innovation are two concepts that are contextually unique. But, together, work really well.
‘Brand’ primarily addresses how (potential) customers perceive a business entity. And ‘Innovation’, in a business context, refers to the changes considered to be valuable — those changes usually originate from ‘new’ ideas. Moreover, a ‘brand’ can be considered a market-driven outcome (a consequent change in perception from customers). Innovation, on the other hand, is an internally-driven process.
Essentially, ‘brand innovation’ is a phrase that defines the evolution of customer perceptions as a result of real and valuable business changes to their offering (products and services), and or processes (internal dealings).
It is clear from this that a new brand campaign (a set of marketing messages), which usually cost companies millions of rand to create, does not really represent brand innovation. This job goes beyond the marketing department.
For marketers, and those involved in their company’s “rebranding” project — three key takeouts are important.
1. Innovation goes beyond changing a logo.
Changing the logo: the alterations businesses make to their Corporate Identity, i.e. logos, slogan, font sizes, colour scheme, etc. — does not automatically equate to lucrative yields by way of customer activity. It does not assist with advancing the experiences that customers have with the brand.
Businesses need innovation in order to advance customer experiences.
Innovation is powered by a series of irrefutable research-based market insights designed to position a brand as a leader in its field. This series culminates in either a service or product which, when offered to a brand’s target market, supports (and is supported by) the company’s strategic intent. Additionally, it is primed to exploit real market opportunities.
Changing one’s CI does not, in itself, assist an entity with implementing something new or improving either existing processes or with the exploration of new market opportunities. Companies need to think carefully about the changes required to augment the perception of value for existing and potential customers.
Innovation principles and practices should be ingrained in the business’ internal structures. Both these must be spread (and deepened) across the company as widely as possible, for true brand innovation to be realised. The intended brand must be or become an integral part of the company’s organisational culture. This cannot be the role of the Chief Marketing Officer — whose core objective is to communicate the subsequent intentions of the business, and its innovations. Fancy advertisements and promotions do little in driving meaningful customer perception and brand equity.
The role of brand innovation essentially lies with the Chief Executive and it is to; help craft, help implement and help assess the brand innovation strategy. I use the word ‘help’ deliberately as the innovation capability in organisations does not solely rest with the CEO (see Leadership’s role is merely support — organisational culture, at all levels, drives innovation). It is the role of leadership however, to adequately allocate resources (facilities, strategy, vision, mission, finance, etc.) in an effort to foster a culture that enables innovation.
2. Don’t renovate if you don’t plan to innovate:

When Absa announced their change in corporate identity, the thought did cross my mind that this may just be another rehash of “we are entering a new phase of our brand”, “we want to show the vibrancy of this company”, “we are innovating and repositioning our brand” and other such corporate waffle. I was soon relieved to hear that they have launched a new, innovative, way of banking. The bank announced that its customers can now use WhatsApp to perform certain transactions such as buying airtime and paying certain bills — this is a world first in the banking industry. Absa is also growing its Fintech capabilities, as demonstrated by its partnering with Walletdoc, a start-up that assists businesses in managing their cash flow.
SEE: Absa Launches WhatsApp banking in South Africa
These are early days and indeed early signs; I do hope that there is still more in store as the company goes through many internally driven changes, such as a reverse-merger with Barclays, whilst simultaneously maintaining an external focus on competitor activity to ensure that they do not eat the bank’s lunch. Such factors, without a doubt, are compelling enough for a business like Absa to start thinking innovatively.
A great lesson arises from this. Winds of change — internally and externally charged — give companies a great opportunity to think about how they could do some renovation. But such renovation must not end with the colours and painting over cracks. It proves more beneficial when a company completely overhauls its way of doing things.
3. Tell us exactly what the Innovation is about:
And if it’s that good; the market must be able to understand and appreciate it first-hand. Peter Drucker, the forefather of contemporary management, once said, “The greatest praise an innovation can receive is for people to say, “This is obvious! Why didn’t I think of it? It’s so simple!” So, even the most novel of innovations, “that creates new users and new markets should be directed towards a specific, clear, and carefully designed application” for the consumer.
A few have seen and used a user-manual for an Apple product, and even fewer have seen Uber’s instruction documents. This is made possible by the entities’ deep appreciation of customer experience, along with the matchless level of product user friendliness, thereby catering to proven desires. Funeral parlours across South African townships are eating corporate financial services companies’ lunch because of their invaluable insight on their customers’ preferences (The Township-Funeral-Parlour-Way). Leaders in this saturated field continue to win by staying true to their brand promise, and delighting customers in every way. Their main source of growth is through word-of-mouth advertising, as the inherent value of a relational aspect in an industry such as this one cannot be understated. The benefit? — no need for big budget ‘revamp’ campaigns, just clean, high grade product offerings that get the job done.
They say that the human attention span has, over the years, arguably, shrunk to the shameful level of a gold fish’s (around 8 seconds). And this is not good for marketers and sales people alike. Because of the short time (and attention) that brands have with their target audiences, it is important for brands to be as succinct as possible when selling a new innovation. Once a brand innovation has been uncovered; brands need to clearly communicate; what it is, how it works, and what value it will add in a customer’s life.
This is not to take away from the creative work that fellow colleagues in the advertising industry do. Instead of pursuing very broad, futuristic, motivational, most of the time vague, aspirational campaigns; perhaps these creative juices need to start flowing more towards answering questions such as, how can we be more bold, deliberate and straight-forward about this new or revamped innovation?
With customers’ choices ever expanding, and access to these choices rapidly increasing — brands will have a tough time trying to win consumers. The need for crystal clear value propositions and how customers are going to access those propositions has never been greater than it is today. This is where marketers’ roles come in, and where they need to lead — not just to impress internal stakeholders, but to make sure that customers understand everything about the proposition of the brand innovation.
What Marketers must consider before doing another Campaign
For those brands planning to make a few tweaks to their font sizes, or logo colours; if there is no plan to make even incremental changes to the way your services or products are going to be offered to the customer — it would be best to not go through with this.
A change in branding gives, at least some customers, the hope that something better is coming — a hope that the products will add more value and address new or unmet needs. An expectation, that services will be offered more efficiently and/or more cost effectively, is often created.
Without meeting these expectations — companies miss an invaluable chance to reshape their brand perceptions and drive uptake.
Marketers must try to convince the boardroom that another ‘aspirational’, “this is our time” campaign, however aesthetically appealing it may be, will not successfully communicate the true brand essence and value proposition. I use the word “try” because most marketing decisions are made by those with significant influence in businesses and the probability that they might have less expertise in branding is often overlooked. Stakeholder buy-in is, nevertheless, an essential part of brand innovation. Often, it is the people inside the boardroom who need to rethink their functional deliverables in order for the business to achieve true and meaningful brand innovation.
When the time comes to change the company slogan — or other internally generated statements such as company values, mission, vision or strategic intent — companies should consider it opportune to also rethink their processes and offerings. In so doing they would arrive at how these could be better packaged for and delivered to their customers. That way, value is added and an investment into changes in colours and other aesthetics becomes justifiable.
