Rebranding Is Getting Out of Hand
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Today Parade Magazine (that full color insert tucked inside many local Sunday papers) ran one of the stupidest articles I've ever seen:
How to Be Indispensable at Work
The article explains how to keep from getting laid off during these tough economic times by using the age-old marketing concept of branding.
Branding is a sort of focused-down, distilled image campaign that used to be applied to consumer products like mascara and dishwashing soap, but now is being applied to everything from individual persons to multinational insurance corporations.
Parade's employee branding advice for workplace survival reduces down to five basic steps:
- Define who you are (and who you aren't). In other words, focus on what makes you different from coworkers and work primarily with that quality as your 'brand'.
- Become well known for one thing. Make your brand simple, distill it down to a single word if possible. So, you know, don't be "the competent creative team-builder with a great sense of humor." Just be "the funny one."
- Communicate your brand. Set up your own brand web site and establish a branded 'web presence' by social networking under your brand only. Beat people over the head with your brand all day every day over and over and over until when anyone says the words "the funny one" the words evoke your face and no one else's.
- Create a signature look. Incredibly, dress like a dork and never deviate from your chosen dumb outfit. Make sure you stick out so that people notice your clothes, and when someone says 'the funny one' everyone responds, "Oh you mean that guy that dresses like such a dork all the time?"
- Leave a personal mark behind. Even if you're running the fry machine at McDonald's you should have a professionally designed business card and a logo and leave it every where. Tuck your card inside each Happy Meal. When you pee, leave your card and logo the edge of the urinal. The Funny One just took a piss! (Wow is that guy indispensable or what? Great logo!)
I can just hear some of you already. I can feel you shaking your heads and wagging your fingers. "Oh Pam, why must you be so negative? These ideas could save someone's job and if that's true, then they're good ideas! These are tough times. Don't be a bitch."
Well, they're not good ideas. They're stupid ideas. They're the kind of ideas that make me want to go find the guy who thought them up and smack him silly until he forks over all his stupid logo cards and his signature look, at which point I will make him eat both the cards and his stupid dorky outfit, In front of all his coworkers, in his underwear.
And they will cheer, too.
Branding and Rebranding
If you want to make a product of yourself, don't let me stop you.
By all means, be my guest.
You'll be in good company. Lately, some of the biggest corporations on earth have been going through a flurry of rebranding activity.
Rebranding is when you take a brand that has come to be associated with a lot of negative crap, and just change its name to reflect the desired new image. You don't make any actual changes to the organization or product itself, you just give it a different name and a different spin.
Sometimes rebranding involves updating the image behind a name: the name doesn't change, but the ad campaign that accompanies it does. A good example of the second type of rebranding is when Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix took the plantation slave in the headscarf and apron off its packaging and replaced her with a modern black woman in corporate dress.
Here are some other major rebranding attempts that have taken place recently:
- The Philip Morris tobacco company became the much more beneficent-sounding Altria. (Which sounds a little bit like 'altruism' or the female child of two lifelong ecologists who dress only in hemp--or possibly, like a lost Atlantean Goddess. You decide.)
- The mercenary firm Blackwater became the much more mystical-sounding Xe after its image was badly sullied by its violent, thuggish, out-of-control performance in Iraq.
- AIG recently became AIU in a desperate and ill-conceived attempt to cover over its fairly horrible reputation, and then moved on to a more aggressive rebranding strategy when that one was widely mocked. It continues to search for a new, vaguer image.
- Brinks home security recently spent $120 million to rebrand itself Broadview home security, which it believes evokes less criminality and more paternal omniscience.
- The Republican Party in the U.S. recently tried to push through a bill rebranding the Democratic Party as The Democrat Socialist Party in all Republican rhetoric and correspondence, but dropped the effort when even their own analysts advised against it.
I have a friend whose employer, a multistate trucking firm, recently went through a two year rebranding analysis that had to cost millions if it cost a dime. In the end, its drivers got blue uniforms instead of brown ones, and a word was dropped from the company name.
The blue uniforms are nice, but so were the brown ones. During those two years, while execs sat around arguing, "Blue, no green! No, blue! No, green!" on six-figure salaries, lots of the company's trucking terminals were shut down, lots of pink slips handed out, wages and benefits were slashed, and market share wobbled badly. However, during this same period the brown stripe on every truck was repainted to a blue stripe.
Priorities. You've got to get those straight before anything else.
This long rebranding campaign finally got sorted out late last year, and this month the news went out that to all remaining employees that, guess what?
The company is rebranding again and everyone will be getting different uniforms.
Someday.
I am reminded of the "lipstick on a pig" flap of the last election campaign. Sure you can change the lipstick from pink to coral to mauve, but a pig is a pig is a pig. Sometimes when we watch the ads on prime time TV my partner and I try to guess what the ad is for before it is over. Always the more evil the company, the more vague and inspiring the ad campaign.
If ad campaigns determined worth and intent, then we'd all be sending thank you letters to the wonderful folks at the major oil companies, the big chemical companies, and the drug companies for all the wonderful kindly things they do for us each and every day out of the kindness of their big corporate hearts.
But what do I know?
I don't even have a brand. Clearly, that is why I am unemployed and not a billionaire. So I guess I'd better get on it ASAP.
I think I'll be "the cranky one".
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Comments
Hi Peggy! I wouldn't say that at all! In fact, I would say there is absolutely nothing generic about you--you are so unique you don't NEED a brand! lol! Thank you for stopping by. :)
Hmmm---After reading this article, I'm trying to figure out how to rebrand my favorite chocolate fudge; ya think it will work? A fun read and thanks for sharing the info…
For once I've got you beat! Forget "the cranky one", I am already up to "the misanthropic one".
Hi Nancy--Personally I don't care what you call that fudge as long as you share it with me! lol!
Mike--I'm headed there. Cranky today, misanthropic tomorrow! So you better protect that brand well. :)
I have always found "The Cranky One" to be able to inject some wisdom and tell it like it is... :D
the new name Xe envokes the thought (for me at least) that it stems from xenophobia. Xe in that context is about as evil a sound as blackwater, which reminded me of blood soaked rivers. i guess they'd be "the human hunters"!
I would be, "freedom seeker" or a "49er" after the I ching symbol, 49
What happened to working better and harder than the next guy?
I think my brand has been removed from the shelves.
Not only do I have to be a slave, but I have to brand myself like a cow for the privilige.
I think they will have to hold their breath and wait for that to happen.
Great Hub Pam, as usual.
TMG
Fabulous hub, Pam. I've been through a few rebranding efforts myself -- for real brands, though, not me! Some of them are quite necessary, but as you rightly pointed out, some of them are just plain stupid.
Hi everyone,
K@ri--Thank you, that was very sweet. :)
MD FREE--I agree, I think anything they call themselves has to be hideous. A new name just isn't going to do it, and you're right, it does evoke the word 'xenophobia' which is somehow horribly appropriate.
blueraven6--My feelings exactly.
Steve--We must have the same brand.
TMG--That was my gut reaction exactly, like oh, now it's not bad enough that I'm a 'human resource' instead of a human being, I have to slap my own label on my own ass too. Amen.
lrohner--Sometimes it's an actual sensible thing, you're right. I was just poking fun at how it's getting to be such a buzzword. Thanks for pointing that out. :)
It reminds me of the series "Dead Like Me" where she has to conform to the hyper-cheerful office standard of behavior, while inside she's thinking "I was late because I'm a Grim Reaper, you moron."
Hi Teresa--Wow I've been there. Maybe I'm the Grim Reaper? Now I'll have to watch the series. :)
I think re-branding got out of hand years ago actually. I remember losing my job along with hundreds of others when companies were merging and scrambling over perceived global competition threats.
The end result was that several companies merged into one, lots of job losses, several hugely costly re-branding exercises resulting, finally, in a name that nobody knew or could associate with and the loss of several historically respected and trusted names in the industry. So, in effect, all past advertising, marketing and branding was null and void and they were starting from scratch.
The only people who benefit from all this crap are the "consultants" who convince companies to spend millions for a new and often s**t and uninspired logo designed by a halfwit fresh out of diapers and a new name, usually one that has been made up and comprises of an invented "word". It is criminal the amount of money that gets wasted on such garbage. However, it has created a whole new industry and a slew of "experts". A bit like man made global warming really.
The re-branding evangelists forever harp on about the world's most famous brands. Often they will use Coca-Cola, being probably the most famous and widely recognized brand worldwide and seem to be able to convince supposedly intelligent CEO's, managers and small business owners that all they need to improve their lot in business is a new "brand". I've heard the spiel from some of these people and believe me, it is astoundingly vague. The amazing thing is that anyone listens to these self appointed, untried and untested fools.
I once asked one of these highly paid consultants a question along the lines of: "OK, so it is acknowledged that Coca-Cola (referred to by most as "Coke" of course because it's easier to use a one syllable name)is globally recognized and has a great brand image, do you think it has anything to do with the fact that they make a product that has universal appeal and have marketed it very well over the past few decades or is it because they came up with such a clever name and logo?"
In return I got a blank stare, so I went on...."...I'm sorry to sound a bit negative, but by your reckoning, if I wanted to market urine as the latest and greatest soft drink on the planet, all I need is a good brand image and a snappy logo and people will be queuing up to buy a can or a bottle, right? I mean, the fact that nobody currently wants to drink piss is nothing that can't be overcome by paying you a hefty consultancy fee to provide me with a tailored brand image that will virtually guarantee the success of my new product, right?".
If I had a picture of this guy's face I'd share it, honestly. I think he was seriously considering all the possibilities that my glib and sarcastic speech had just aroused in his patently pea like brain. The fact that he didn't even crack a smile was confirmation enough for me that anyone who handed him or his employers a penny of their money was an even bigger fool than the one standing before me at that moment.
To my mind a brand follows the people who stand behind it, certainly not the other way around. For any brand, as with individuals, respect is something that has to be earned. Do that and your brand will become worth something. Try to do it the other way around however and you might as well be selling carbonated piss.
Just my cynical 2 cents ;-)
I think some of the companies that rebrand themselves are hoping we are all too stupid to notice. A skunk is a skunk, even if he renames himself Pepe le Pew.
Brinks changed its name? Brinks? But they were famous, I never heard of Broadview. Oh well. Figures. You're probably right that they spent more working out whether to do that (and throw away a lot of history) than on retaining employees or actually doing a good job.
Thank you for punching holes in the Parade article. Really, it's no kind of life having to simplify who you are to a one-word keyword and then live down to it, yikes. Building a good reputation makes sense. Actually doing a good job and getting along with the people you work with is probably best for keeping a job anyway -- there was a quite different article I read in one of my science feeds that they analyzed who was laid off in various downsizings -- and it was the people who weren't happy. The ones happy with their lives and jobs got retained.
And probably didn't bother creating a logo for themselves anyway.
"Insanity in individuals is something rare, but in groups, parties, nations and epochs it is the rule." Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche must have read that same article, Pam.
I'm like Robert I had no idea Brinks changed their name either,..I always seem to learn something new in every hub I read of yours,...And your humor is great !!!
Great hub pgrundy. I really liked the way you have presented the topic on rebranding. Its a norm nowadays to keep rebranding.But that alone does not help.
caymanhost--Are you saying that Coke is NOT carbonated piss? OMG!!! lol! No, seriously, I agree with everything you said. Whatever happened to making a good product, doing your best on the job, and so forth. When they're publishing popular articles about how those of us at the bottom of the foodchaim need a 'brand' it's gone way too far.
Jerliee--I agree. It's clear that lots of people in advertising think we're all stupid. Sometimes it feels like that is even the goal--let's see how stupid we can make people.
robert--Yes my thought was, why would anyone WANT to hand onto any of these jobs that much, to debase themselves that much? I know we all need to eat, but most jobs already require a pound of flesh with a smile.
Mindfield--Thanks! Great quote! :)
Army Infantry Mom--I appreciate it, and yes, Brinks has that commercial all over right now, explaining their rebranding campaign.
Thanks jayb23! Good to see you. :)
Great hub topic. I agree.. "Branding yourself" is one of the most common overused phrases in recent months- often quoted by the plethora of "life coaches" that are cropping up everywhere. If everyone is an expert and guru as part of their personal brand.. than is anyone?
nice one dude
Hi Reynolds_Writing--I agree. In a recent book Barbara Ehrenreich talks about life coaches and how utterly unhelpful 98% of them are to the recently unemployed. (I apologize in advance to all you life coaches out there.) There's something seriously wrong with a culture that requires its people to commodify themselves. I'm so tired of that perspective. How about I just be Pam, and if nobody wants to give me a job, fine. I'll plant beans and make soup and write. If I never see another cubicle again it will be too soon. Thanks for your thoughts!
Gee. All these years I was rebranded and didn't even know it. Who knew? Good one,Pam.
Thanks RV! I don't think I warrant a brand anymore. I think I might be in the discount generic bin.
That branding thing for people is bollocks, to my mind, marketing jargon made horrible flesh.
As for being indispensable, "if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted...."
Hi LG--I like that, "If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted." We always say, "I was looking for a job when I found this one." Seriously, that was truly one of the more asinine job articles I've ever read. Thanks for your comment.
Great hub! Wow definitely becoming a fan, even if I don't agree totally with the premise here. Those blue stripes probably were probably pretty important, especially if it makes the company stand out a bit more. Everyone is handing out pink slips right now, those blue stripes are part of a process to stop the bleeding. But hey, that did make me laugh, and you brought up some good points.
Bravo!
Thanks gregorymjason--That is the theory behind the blue stripes isn't it? Thanks for being a good sport about my smart mouth. :)
Fantastic Hub pgrundy I'm currently doing a lot of research on personal branding and this hits many of the big points I've learned about right on the head :)
Peggy W says:
5 months ago
I realize it is serious business for companies, but you injected much humor into this discussion of branding.
My brand? Hmmm.......have to think about it. Guess I am too generic for a full fledged brand of my own. LOL