The first in a regular series, thinking about branding from a design viewpoint – this time from our Senior Designer, Guy Chalkley.

This week’s design focus is on Packard Bell in an identity overhaul…

Packard Bell has launched a new identity, along with a new notebook range designed with Italian car design group Pininfarina.

The new identity, which features the initials ‘PB’ as well as Packard Bell’s full name, aims to help the computer company drive the branding towards the acronym PB over time. It has ditched purple for red, and now carries the tagline ‘Puredesire’.

The ‘red’ in the middle of ‘Puredesire’ is picked out in the appropriate colour, which is intended to communicate ‘passion and desire, as these are the driving elements behind the new brand and the new products’, according to a Packard Bell spokeswoman.

Overall I’m not sure about this. Nice lines yes, but I feel it belongs more to Fiat.

It would seem the car design influence has been a decisive factor in ‘driving’ the identity. Carving out their own niche should have been achieved by a brand this high profile.

It’s easy to criticise but apart from a beautiful graphic execution, the design seems to have no corner-stone of rationalisation from the what we’ve seen so far… just shiny and red don’t do it!

Having thought about brand migration yesterday in the context of Santander(http://www.thevalueengineers.com/2009/05/27/banks-and-brand-migration-alex-comments-on-santander-for-the-bbc/), I thought it might be worth setting out some of the key issues brand owners might want to consider before setting out on a similar exercise.

- Why are you doing this? Simple question to start with but a good one to check before you start the journey. Inevitably there will be benefits of synergy, costs savings in rationalisation and so on, but you also have to ask yourself what is the benefit from a branding perspective? How will the new destination brand be a bigger and better brand vision than where you are now – rather than just replacing one name with another?

- What is in it for your end consumer? Consumers can be very cynical about brand name changes and will always ask “What is in it for me?” In order to take them with you on the journey you have to offer them the benefits of coming with you – whether that is better product, better service, or better value.

- What are the risks involved? Which customers are you likely to lose along the way and do the benefits of the new brand in attracting new customers outweigh that loss? How do you mitigate against the risks through effective marketing?

- How do you tell the right story about the brand migration? You can position a brand name change in the same way you do a brand – who am I targetting? what is the benefit? why should they believe it? Once you have that you need to tell the story powerfully and convicingly.

- Do you have enough resource to really get behind it? Changing a name is not just about new livery and letterheads but also about the resource commitment for communicating the change to your customers and building a vision for the new brand in people’s minds. This does not come cheap – just imagine the cost of the recent Norwich Union to Aviva campaign.

Robert Sjoborg, Director of the Brand Academy at Orkla is a long term client and friend of The Value Engineers. He has collaborated with Mats Persson, another friend and occasional associate of ours (and MD of The Core Company), to write a new book entitled “Archetypes & Brands”. This has recently been published in Sweden, and now an English translation is available too.

It’s a good summary of the case for using archetypes in defining and developing brand personalities. One of its real strengths however is that so many of the case histories are based on Nordic brands which makes it a really fresh and interesting read.

The book has the ISBN number of 978-91-633-0725-6.  Unfortuantely it’s not available for sale through bookshops in the UK or on-line but copies may be bought directly from The Core Company. Contact: ann.dynehall@thecorecompany.se