The brands on the turn

Find out what HSBC, BlackBerry and Tesco are doing to change direction.

HSBC

HSBC quietly dropped its strapline ‘The world’s local bank’ earlier this year and announced last month that it will lose 2,200 UK staff. It declined to comment on the strapline U-turn, but consultant marketing director Rob Rees says it is a reflection of the fact that HSBC wasn’t ever really ‘the world’s local bank’. “The world’s local bank will only get you so far, and that starts to be irrelevant to the people in the UK and other markets. You really need to start acting more locally because the issues that consumers face and respond to in each of the markets are going to be quite different.”

BlackBerry

Parent company RIM posted a $125m (£78.5m) loss in its latest quarter and is looking to save $1bn (£636m). It is hoping it can turn the company around by focusing on business-minded people rather than consumers and has used the line ‘Think different, act different’ – a direct reference to the ‘think different’ line originally used by Apple.
But research seen by Marketing Week shows that it is ninth in a list of preferred mobile and tablet brands for UK consumers with a household income of more than £40,000. Russell Feldman, associate director of YouGov, which is behind the BrandIndex study, says: “BlackBerry just isn’t sexy. When organisations give senior managers a choice of company handset, the iPhone is the one people go for. BlackBerry is relegated.” No one at BlackBerry was available
to comment.

Tesco

The supermarket has posted a third consecutive quarterly dip in sales, following a relaunch of its own brand Everyday Value range. But this is a U-turn in progress, which includes hiring an additional 4,300 staff at 700 shops and revamping more than 100 stores. Chief executive Philip Clarke said this month: “We are rapidly implementing our six-point UK plan. Our customers are seeing the evidence of the changes we’re making and they’re telling us they like what they see.”

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