Web Comment
What you said
Rebranding pwc-style
Mark Ritson took Pricewaterhouse- Coopers to task in his column last week and web readers pitched in happy to comment. Read the original column at www.marketingweek.co.uk/ Markritsonpwc and comment extracts below:
I agree with Mark on building the brand from the inside out and on not isolating the brand within a small team. It should be understood and incorporated into all the activities across the business, and therefore feel a much more natural, credible and internally owned (as opposed to externally-imposed) progression. But I think there’s a difference between “brand” and “branding”. There are times when branding has to be kept secret until it is revealed. But it goes wrong when that revelation is a shock and doesn’t represent the brand that people recognise. If the brand is a promise, it’s only sensible to make sure that the people who have to deliver it believe in it. In a service organisation such as pwc, that needs to be absolutely clear and respected.
Anonymous
I think these pwc examples highlight the importance of internal communications as a discipline, which is so often underestimated by marketers.
Especially in the area of business-to-business and even more so, in professional services, the demonstration or embodiment of the brand positioning by personnel (the physical evidence of a positioning if you will) has the power to make or break the millions of advertising pounds poured into media.
Ian MacDonald
I agree with the way the rebranding and communication exercise should have been carried out. However, given that the company has been referred to for some time now as pwc, and as a rebranding project goes, apart from playing with the identity – which I assume will not be great anyway – this is the equivalent of a British Petroleum to BP move.
Brian J Douglas