I have to agree with Yang Jian, managing editor of Automotive News China, that Baojun’s new models ‘obviously’ failed to reverse the brand’s sales’ decline.
It is obvious given that the vehicles are priced considerably above the previous ones, and despite its next-gen tech, there’s no real alignment with what Baojun stands for.
There might be a new logo (débuted January 2019) but GM expects that this, the new premium products, and (I would expect) other retail updates would undo nearly nine years of brand equity.
The associations of Baojun as an entry-level brand run deeply, and the new models are like, if you’ll pardon the analogy and the use of another car group, taking the next Audis and sticking a Škoda badge on them. Except even stylistically, the new Baojuns bear little resemblance to the old ones—they’re that radical a departure.
I wonder if it would be wiser to keep Baojun exactly where it was, and let it decline, while launching the new models under a more upscale GM brand, even one perceived as ‘foreign’ or ‘joint venture’ by Chinese consumers.
DaimlerChrysler made the mistake of killing Plymouth when it was surplus to requirements, then found itself without a budget brand when the late 2000s’ recession hit. Chrysler, once the upper-middle marque, had to fill the void.
There’s a reason companies like GM and Volkswagen have brands spanning the market: they feed buyers into the corporation, and there’s something for everyone.
And while it’s possible to move brands upscale, creating four lines where the base model prices exceed the highest price you have ever charged for your other base models is just too sudden a shift.
A rebrand should be done with consultation, and that should be factored in to any decision-making. In the 2010s, it should consider out-of-the-box suggestions, especially in an increasingly cluttered market-place. It should be launched internally first, then externally. A new logo would surface after months of exhaustive design work. The result should be something distinctive and meaningful that resonates with all audiences.
Meanwhile, here’s one done by my Alma Mater amongst false claims, poor analyses, and considerable opposition, with the resulting logo appearing a mere week after the powers-that-be voted to ignore the feedback. In branding circles, any professional will tell you that there’s no way a logo can appear that quickly—unless, of course, Victoria University of Wellington had no inclination to listen to any of its audiences during its “feedback” process. But then, maybe this was done in a hurry:
The result is flawed and lacks quality. Without even getting into the symbol or the typography, the hurried nature of this design is evident with the margin: the text is neither optically nor mathematically aligned, and accurately reflects the lack of consideration that this rebrand has followed. The one symbol I like, the ceremonial crest, does away with the type, and judging from the above, it’s just as well.
I like change, and my businesses have thrived on it. But this left much to be desired from the moment we got wind of it. It supplants a name sourced from Queen Victoria with the name of an even older, white, male historical figure, creates confusion with at least three universities that share its initials if it is to be abbreviated UoW (Woollongong, Wah, Winchester; meanwhile the University of Washington is UW), and offers little by way of differentiation.
Yes, there are other Victoria Universities out there. To me that’s a case of sticking with the name and marketing it more cleverly to be the dominant one—and forcing others to retrench. Where did the Kiwi desire to be number one go? Actually, how bad was the confusion, as, on the evidence, I’m unconvinced.
If it’s about attracting foreign students, then alumnus Callum Osborne’s suggestion of Victoria University of New Zealand is one example to trade on the nation brand, which rates highly.
There were many ways this could have gone, and at each turn amateurism and defeatism appeared, at least to my eyes, to be the themes. #UnWell
The city’s new logo—it is not a rebrand if the underlying tenets are the same—has not met with much support.
The next question must be: all right, if we’re all so smart, can we do better?
Ian Apperley and I think we can. Ian approached me yesterday morning to ask whether we should do a competition and open it up to all Wellingtonians.
At least that addresses the criticisms about getting people involved, and ensuring the internal audience—that’s us—is engaged.
But to kick it off, we can’t just come up with another logo. I think we need to think seriously about how we might replace the 22-year-old Absolutely Positively Wellington brand (in the widest sense of that word).
And here’s a head-start to make life easier: a discussion document with some Wellingtonians’ opinions on where the brand could go. In November 2010, I called a meeting with Hilary Beaton, Brian Calhoun, Nick Kapica, Christopher Lipscombe and Mayor Celia Wade-Brown to discuss the ideas about rebranding our city. (In other words, the fact that a city rebrand was of concern to Wellingtonians prior to the Massey University–The Dominion Post mayoral debate was foreseen by yours truly.)
The document was not released due to busy-ness at the end of 2010, then, the need to seek permission from the participants (which took a little while to secure). All have agreed that it can be released to the public.
I didn’t want to use it as something to do with my campaign when it belonged to everyone. With the discussion around a city brand arising again, this seems as good a time as any.
You can largely ignore the minutes of the discussion itself and go on to p. 6. In there, we felt that the Wellington brand should include these ideas, but stopped short at offering a concrete slogan.
Edge. The notion of “edge” came from this first part. Coastal cycleways are on the edge of the city, literally. Biodiversity is celebrated as an “edgy” concept. Cutting-edge is a concept Wellingtonians can relate to. The Sevens are edgy as a concept; as is concentrated diversity. Connections to science and technology. Following Brisbane’s example, Wellington already has research institutes that can help with R&D in the city. Empowerment. Other ideas that surfaced from the discussion of a producer culture led to the notion of empowering individuals, which could relate not just to technology, but simpler ideas of growing fruit trees in public gardens, or poetry readings when meeting together. Encourage diversity. The carrot is better than the stick. Ideas of tolerance, and showing a better way need to be promoted. Nimble. Wellington can move quickly thanks to size and innovation. Contests. The idea of competition needs to be built in to the Wellington brand, as discussed above. Youth. Get young people involved and allow them ownership. Economic drivers. We identified the beauty of the city, diversity, public spaces, technology and the arts as important drivers for Wellington. The waterfront. It is a public space that is at the core of much of Wellington’s beauty and is a driver of creativity. Creative locations. Already Downstage is becoming an incubator for productions, allowing producers to retain their IP—a shift in how theatres could be managed, and totally in line with a creative city. This shift answers how we work today. What if it extended incubation to designers and other creatives? The weightless economy. Design, IP, and related services can help raise New Zealand’s OECD rankings and can overcome the ‘tyranny of distance’. Royalty-based products, such as Apollo 13 and others, paint a way forward. Ownership and shifting to an individual culture. By providing ownership of ideas, Wellington can shift to a more individualistic culture, rather than the team one that tends to hold entrepreneurship back.
The below was written on the 4th inst., the morning of the release of Absolutely Positively Wellington’s “plus sign” logo, and ran on Scoop, where I am told it is one of the most liked for the Wellington section. As it is to do with branding, I have republished it in full here. (The parody image was done separately.)
As I learned of the story first through a story by Katie Chapman in The Dominion Post, out of courtesy, I sent the below to her initially, some hours before Scoop, where it was picked up as an op–ed. As the only mayoral candidate with a master’s degree in the area, and as an author, and as an editorial board member on the Journal of Brand Management, I might be one of the better qualified people to discuss the topic. I might also have been the first to write about destination branding as a discipline in this country. A city rebrand was also among the topics I discussed regularly during the debating season during the 2013 campaign, and I first raised it at The Dominion Post–Massey University debate in September. (It turns out I also blogged about it in 2010.)
Let’s just say it was a topic that concerned me—as well as many other Wellingtonians, including councillors who began digging and found out the plus sign cost us NZ$25,000. So on Monday morning, I put pen to paper (figuratively). Other than Scoop’s publication, I was interviewed on Newstalk ZB about my thoughts.
Incidentally, Edinburgh has a particularly good destination brand for a capital city.
I’m fairly certain that when Wellingtonians identified that our city needed a new brand, the one shown today in The Dominion Post isn’t what they had in mind.
It doesn’t matter whether you are branding for a company or a city, the biggest rule is: get your internal audience on side first.
In the case of a city, that internal audience is the people of Wellington.
And there seems to be less excuse for not engaging citizens in the age of social media.
Of course, if everyone were engaged, then the status quo tends to be preserved. People tend not to like change, even when they say they want change. However, the logic is that at least the city’s opinion leaders must be involved in a rebranding process.
Maybe they were. Although if they were, it doesn’t come through.
First up, as I said in my election campaign, this is a 22-year-old brand.
Today, it remains so.
It may have had touch-ups over the years, mostly typographically—moving from typefaces like Perpetua and Baskerville under Mayors Wilde and Blumsky to an italicized FF Fago under Mayor Prendergast. But it reflects the aspirations of Wellington in 1991. What we saw today was the same brand, but a new logo. It comes across as a cosmetic alteration, applying lipstick to the bulldog.
Arguably, grouping the wording together into a single place is preferable to having it divided into three, with black and white bands. It would not be wrong to call the logo more ‘modern’ in the formal sense of the word: it is reflective of modernism.
Æsthetics will always be subjective, but there is a school of thought that a logo that can be easily replicated is a positive development. A plus sign is easily replicated, but then, there’s the second rule of branding: differentiate.
The purpose of branding is to symbolize, differentiate and communicate.
The logo is original: while there are many with pluses (Google Plus, or our Plus One channels on Freeview), I can’t think of any that are executed in this exact way with this colour scheme. But you get an underwhelming feeling since we’re the creative capital. A few more pluses would convey dynamism (although that has been done before, too)—as long as we stick with getting Wellingtonians on side first.
The brand itself—Absolutely Positively Wellington—doesn’t take into consideration those sectors that did not exist in Wellington in a major way, notably ICT. Maintaining it tells me that it’s more of the same. That message is backed up by the abolition of the portfolio within council.
It doesn’t take into consideration the thoughts of any of our young people, who will be burdened with this as the city’s brand in years to come. Those in their 20s might feel a familiarity with the term ‘Absolutely Positively Wellington’, but also a disconnect. They weren’t consulted on where they see Wellington or what they aspire us to be.
The logo, therefore, reinforces the old brand. Comments on social media this morning highlight that: at the time of writing, I have yet to see a positive one. They range from not knowing what the logo means to thoughts that it would be better applied to a church [one example shown at right].
That brings us to the third rule: tell the internal audience what it stands for before rolling it out to an external audience.
Yet this is all shrouded in mystery today.
Another point of interest is the logo’s removal from parking tickets. It’s going to be reeled back from being a city brand to one that is applied in more formal marketing efforts. We go from the enviable position of having a city brand to a mere destination brand.
There is a subtle difference. A city brand is meant to unite the city, giving everyone who lives here a sense of pride. A destination brand is one aimed at marketing, the province of business and tourism agencies.
However, I’d still like to see us all “own” it because modern marketing sees citizens participate as much as organizations.
While I accept that there’s a Resene deal that sees citizens being able to adopt the yellow ourselves—which on paper is a fine idea—will the lack of earlier engagement encourage us to take it up?
So in the branding 101 handbook, there have been mistakes.
On the plus side, pun intended, I’d be happier to see the yellow box in movie credits and on letterheads than its black-and-white predecessor. That was certainly unworkable in destination marketing and lacked appeal for years. One might say it has never had appeal.
Regardless of how negatively the Stuff reader poll puts the new logo, it’s not as bad as the Wellywood sign proposal.
I hope for our city’s sake this works out and that stage two of the roll-out—where it’s sold to the rest of us—is far more convincing.
WordPress, with its automatic deactivation of Jetpack after each update, messed up, so I have no metrics for the last two months of this blog. Nor did it send me emails notifying me of your comments. It would have been useful to know how the last couple of posts went, to gauge your reaction to them on the day, rather than seeing comments now after the election. Essentially, all I have of the last two months’ stats is the above: apparently 12 people popped by yesterday. I’m pretty sure the numbers were healthier during the campaign!
In fact, Jetpack does not update automatically any more, which shows what a faulty product it is. I’d prefer to see WordPress get back to offering statistics separately, since it’s clear that the plug-in does not do what its makers claim.
So I apologize to the two commenters who gave me feedback on the Kapiti Airport idea and the flyover. It’s true that if blogging were a more important platform for the campaign, I’d have noticed the foul-up with Jetpack, so I take some responsibility—and maybe it is naïve to think that software works out of the box. It very rarely does. Take it from a guy who spent three days post-campaign reinstalling software.
To David, I am talking about a long-term plan, for something to happen mid-century. However, your idea of going even further north has merit. If we regionalize, a major international airport located there could service Taranaki, Manawatu, Hawke’s Bay and the Wairarapa as well as Wellington.
To Leon, sorry I didn’t get your vote, but this might explain my opposition to the flyover.
There are a few issues here at play. First, it’s not a single flyover, but two. The first might cost in the $100 million region, and the second, I guess, will be about the same.
As you and I know, whether it’s funded by rates or taxes doesn’t make that much difference to everyday Wellingtonians: we’re still paying for it.
The time saving gained is minimal because, eventually, the flyovers will be choked with traffic. The bottlenecks will remain exactly where they are: the Mt Vic Tunnel and Tory Street.
Now, if there was a plan that cost under $10 million for the immediate area and delivered the same traffic flow improvement, then it’s worth looking at. The good news is that there is: Richard Reid’s proposal, the one that seems to get no traction in the media, yet it’s elegant, and it works.
Richard’s had a lot of expertise looking at these solutions and if Wellington indeed favours innovation—though the council’s decision to abolish the ICT portfolio is a retrograde step that signals the opposite—then we need to be hearing from him.
When you think about the entire project as central government has envisaged it—two Mt Vic Tunnels (though I am beginning to see the merit of this part at least), two flyovers, and even more changes at the Terrace Tunnel end—we’re looking at $500 million.
I’m just not convinced it will get us bang for the buck, especially if we ratepayers haven’t been told what the options are. All we tend to get, especially in the mainstream media, is “one flyover or no flyover”. If those were the sole choices—and they’re not—then I can see why you’d feel I might be letting the side down, especially since (I’m guessing) we both get stuck in traffic jams around the Basin Reserve on a regular basis.
I’m deeply thankful for those who voted for me—18 per cent once the preferences were distributed is an improvement, as were 10,000 votes (or least a whisker shy of the number). We ran a grass roots’ campaign that was dismissed by some media, but we showed that Wellingtonians can think for ourselves and that we have a voice. We should create conditions in which our best private enterprise can do its thing, and not, as some of my opponents were so keen to do, go cap-in-hand to central government, thereby going against global trends by centralizing more power with national politicians. This city still needs a rebrand to overcome a tired one. On the campaign team, we have a desire to continue the points in my manifesto: it shouldn’t matter who is mayor. We should still try to identify the high-growth firms, promote innovation in our capital, and act on as many of the points as possible. Wellington is looking at a game-changing decade and we should grasp the opportunity.
My good friend and colleague Stanley Moss has written a new book, What Is a Brand?, which provokes some thought on the question in the title.
Those who know Stanley and have followed his work know that each year, he issues a Brand Letter, which closes with various definitions of branding.
If there’s one thing brand experts agree on, it’s the fact that no two brand experts will ever agree on the definition of a brand. What Is a Brand? turns this into its primary advantage, getting definitions from some of the top people in the profession, and somehow I managed to slip in there.
Ian Ryder, Nicholas Ind, the late Colin Morley, Thomas Gad, Ava Hakim, Simon Paterson, Pierre d’Huy, Malcolm Allan, Patrick Harris, Tony Quinlan, Manas Fuloria, Steven Considine, Sascha Lötscher, George Rush, João Freire, Virginia James, Filippo Dellosso, the great Fritz Gottschalk, and others all contribute definitions, on which readers can ruminate.
As Stanley notes in his introduction:
The aim of this book is to render brand thinking more accessible, to share with you the ideas of theorists and practitioners who bear witness to the evolution of policy and governance, especially in light of society’s drift towards overconsumption and environmental damage.
Keep calm and wear a tiara: I’m now also general counsel for Miss Universe New Zealand, on top of everything else. The news announcement went out yesterday—the Lucire article is here, while we have a new website at nextmissnz.com. The highlight is reducing the entry fee from NZ$3,500 to NZ$10 (plus a workshop, if selected, at NZ$199). We’ve had some great feedback over the website, which I am thrilled about, since I designed it and made sure all the requirements of the licence agreement were complied with.
The year’s going to be a very exciting one with the competition, which will be far more transparent than it ever has been, with the possibility of its return to network television after a two-decade absence. We’re bringing integrity back into the process. From my point of view, the idea is one of business transformation, to take something that has languished and turn it into something that’s exciting, relevant, and 21st-century. With this development, I’m relieved I never published a word on the scandal last year and never went to the media over it (even if others did—often to their detriment). It makes it a lot easier to move forward with the future if you don’t keep dwelling on the past—and with the great programme we have, why should we look back?
I’m looking forward to bringing you more with national director Evana Patterson and executive producer Nigel Godfrey. We’ve created something dynamic that the New Zealand public, and the Miss Universe family, can all get behind. Keep an eye on nextmissnz.com where we’ll post more announcements—and if you think the T-shirts (right) are as cheeky as I do, then they are available for sale online, too.
I walked into the National Bank yesterday to sort out something for Dad—years ago, we gave each other signing authority on our accounts. They had misplaced that authority—a bit worrying if a bank doesn’t hold on to things over 10 years old—but, with the transition of the National Bank branding to ANZ, it reminded me of an interesting phenomenon.
Most folks know that ANZ has owned the National Bank since the early 2000s. There were always rumours that the Lloyds horse would be retired as the licence would expire, and that eventually, everything would bear the ANZ brand collateral. ANZ had sent out letters in the past talking about the acquisition, but that everything would stay the same—until last year, when it said that it would finally take the best of both organizations and combine them under a single ANZ brand.
Fair enough. It might mean the closure of branches where both banks existed, for cost savings, but it was inevitable.
The surprise was this: the announcement of the rebranding of the National Bank brought mass defections to other banks. Westpac, Kiwibank and TSB mounted campaigns to attract departing National customers. My friends at TSB, where I have banked happily since the late 2000s, said potential customers came in, with at least one commenting (ironically to the Australian-born staff member there), ‘I hate Australians.’
But to those Aussie-hating National Bank customers: you have been banking with Australians for the good part of the past decade, and the only thing that will be changing is the logo on the façade.
There was no ownership change, no change on the board of directors, nothing.
It brings home that people can be loyal to an organization simply of how it looks to them outwardly, even if, inwardly, it’s owned or run by people they might “hate”.
There’s nothing wrong with this behaviour, but it’s something for branding consultants and advisers to bear in mind: never underestimate the effect of brand loyalty even in an age where we advocate transparency. There are some that opt not to peer behind the corporate veil.
This is the reason that certain publications are still seen as locally owned even when their share holding in the Companies’ Register says differently, or that no one seems to mind that the vast majority of our New Zealand fruit juice brands are in the hands of Japanese and American companies. Just Juice and Fresh-up aren’t really competitors, just as ANZ and the National Bank have not been for years.
At the end of the day, does any of this matter? A little, if “Aussie-hating” stems from an opposition to profits heading offshore rather than, say, TSB’s community trust. It’s not very ANZAC of anyone to hate our neighbours, but if folks truly think this way, it’s worth understanding just whom owns what, and do your business or shopping accordingly.
The same rule, I might add, applies to political parties: does “your party” actually stand for the values you think it does? Or, for that matter, does your preferred political candidate?
So James Murdoch has announced the end of the News of the World. It’s no biggie: as others have discovered, a domain name for The Sun on Sunday has been registered, and if this is by an agent of News International, it simply makes sense for the Murdoch Press to consolidate its tabloid brands and raise the circulation of The Sun.
Chatting about it here at work today, my view was that the problems plaguing the Murdoch Press were cultural, and shuttering one paper really wouldn’t make much difference. I described Rupert’s former hands-on style and, like him or not, the man was the master of his craft for years. He knew the sort of headlines that would shock and get sales. Whether one admires the craft is another matter, though, it should be noted, it made the guy a multimillionaire.
It’s easy to forecast that News will allow the shock of the death of the 168-year-old newspaper brand to set in, push through with the BSkyB deal, and relaunch the paper under its new name, hiring some of the 200 staff back.
It’s not the first time Murdochs have rejigged or renamed a newspaper. Already I can envisage a ‘Reach for your new Sun’ headline being proclaimed in a Saturday edition, apeing what happened in the 1960s.
Interestingly, another writer also believes in the cultural explanation. Simon Dumenco points to how News behaves in the US, seemingly operating in a fantasy-land.
In Britain, on Wednesday morning, every newspaper carried the hacking scandal on the front page—with the notable exception of The Sun, which led with a pregnant Victoria Beckham. (The Guardian had all 10 papers, but The Sun’s page one has since disappeared, presumably due to a copyright complaint. I have put that front page below.) The hacking scandal appeared on p. 6. Dumenco points out that when gay marriage became legal in New York, everyone there carried that news prominently, except for the Murdoch Press, which relegated it to a bottom-of-page headline in its New York Post, and a second ‘What’s News’ in-brief item in The Wall Street Journal.
Dumenco predicts that the public will tire of it, though, as I blogged earlier this week, in 1997 a lot of people swore off tabloids. Not a lot changed in the immediate years after that. But we can only hope: one of our predictions in Beyond Branding was that consumers would demand greater transparency and integrity. That certainly has held true for a lot of sectors. They are true, even of media, but the cycle is longer thanks in no small part to the habits some people have with news providers. Nevertheless, it is happening.
As news consumers move online—and there is plenty of evidence of this shift—it’s possible that the audience will shift to media that are perceived to be fairer. Those wanting confirmation of various biases can find them in niche media or blogs. There are more people analysing the media, so it may be easier for people to discover critical thinking behind the stories.
There’ll always be a mob mentality (people have banded together since they began socializing) and tabloid journalism will not disappear (there’s a sense of Schadenfreude, especially of celebrity stories, while there’s inequality in society). But this week’s example of the fairly rapid withdrawals of advertising accounts from the News of the World—Ford, Reckitt Benckiser and Renault come to mind—shows that the public has a line that shouldn’t be crossed. The internet has allowed people to group together to make their viewpoints known, and it’s refreshing to note that, more often than not, we do so for good causes and a sense of justice, rather than for divisiveness or harm.
A very good Vista Group luncheon (Jim, Natalie, self), where we discussed: the Gap rebrand; The Hobbit, unions and the BNZ Centre boilermakers’ strike; and my mayoral campaign.
On the first topic, we concluded that it was down to a simple cock-up. None of us could see any reason for the Gap to rebrand (was there a change of strategy, management, or trend?) though we did see a reason for Wellington to do so.
‘Absolutely, positively Wellington’ has been with us for 20 years. I remember when it was first released, all set in Perpetua Bold, adorning the new office of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce after its shift from Church Street. As Jim pointed out, it was a contrast to the negativity that Wellingtonians had about our city’s own image, as typified by TV shows such as Gliding on: drab, grey, and full of civil servants.
The one event that might have given us a bit of a boost was Sesqui. And what a disaster that turned out to be: an event that never began.
I said as much when we discussed the arts and cultural side to Wellington during the campaign. The brand, Mayor Prendergast mentioned, was revamped when she took office. Nine years on, I think we need to move on again: that Wellington’s brand does not reflect our city’s passions.
Every brand must be inclusive. It must also differentiate. There are many people in the ICT sector, who are an important part of Wellington, who need to be included. We have fashion designers and event producers, who thrive on the notion that Wellington is the most creative city to be in. When the former mayor said that we were now also the culinary capital, I said that we had to define that by way of our city’s creative manna: not just the culinary capital, but the culinary arts’ capital. Everything we do seems to be underpinned by this idea of putting in that extra zing, whether it’s my oft-quoted example of Silverstripe or the quality behind Mojo Coffee.
There is work to be done, and I’d love to engage with Wellingtonians on getting some kind of framework down for a 2010s city brand. The campaign may be over, but it’s only highlighted the things that need to be done. Let’s start with the strategic ideas and work our way to the operational.
They range from not knowing what the logo means to thoughts that it would be better applied to a church [one example shown at right].
