What's in a rebrand?

Rebranding can be a great exercise if done for the right reasons. If you know your company’s taken a shift change in another direction, or if you realise that your original message has been lost, a strategic reimagining of your company profile can pay dividends. It’s the business equivalent of buying a new suit and haircut, and reminding the world that you’re a force to be reckoned with.

Curiously, ASDA has decided to embark upon an exciting rebranding exercise of its own, where 3,500 of its own-brand products are going to be relaunched as the “Chosen By You” range. We’re told that each product was tested on a minimum of 50 (yes, that’s right, almost a standard school classroom-sized amount) people, and, at a cost of £100m, it’s the single largest own label re-launch in UK history.

But how much of an impact will this have at ground level, and what is it trying to achieve? Most consumers are pretty much fixed at one shop. If you’re an ASDA shopper, chances are that a Tesco rebrand won’t make you switch stores, and the same works in reverse. Combine force of habit with our very own age of austerity and it suggests that it won’t drive masses of customers towards ASDA. So it begs the question – was it a PR job?

For _space group, our rebranding journey has been quite different. After we blew out the candles at our 50^th birthday celebrations as Waring and Netts, a firm known primarily for architecture, we rebranded to _space group. In doing this, we weren’t looking to scribble out one name and replace it for another because both Waring and Netts have long since retired – the change was a conscious decision we took to remind clients both old and new that while we were originally an architectural firm, we’ve grown and diversified since 1957, and now we’re a design, build and operate organisation. Today, _space group works right across the built environment, not only as architects, but as landscape and urban designers, construction specialists, building surveyors, facilities managers, interior designers and specialist consultants.

A still from our internal rebranding campaign, showing the change from Waring and Netts to _space group

We can’t claim that the name was “Chosen By You”, but it was chosen by us, to represent what we bring to the marketplace. We bought our new suit not to show off, but to show our true colours as an inclusive business, and so far, it has paid dividends for us. We’ve grown our Yorkshire and Humberside office, and we’ve been able to open up a North West office which is gearing up to celebrate its first birthday in November. We’ve also been able to diversify even further with spacehus – our timber modular building business.

If ASDA’s rebrand is more than just a PR stunt (which they’ve been doing a lot of lately - http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3143922/Crispwich-hits-shelves.html ), then they should be lauded for trying to listen to their customers, as we believe we listen to ours. If not, then it’s another nail in the coffin of consumer trust.

New beginnings…

Although January 1^st is usually associated with new beginnings, this time of year, blessed as it is with being the time of year that youngsters go back to school, and Freshers get a short, sharp introduction to the wonderful world of student life, is also a natural time for people to look at turning the page and starting a new chapter of their lives.

The government is pushing the “September as a new beginning” line by encouraging local authorities and businesses to submit their proposals for Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) by September 6. What exactly these LEPs, which stand to replace Regional Development Agencies, will do, is still unclear, but hopefully they will unite local authorities and businesses in common goals like never before.

Indeed, there’s a buzz in the air across the UK as it looks like, we might, possibly, be looking to come out of the recession. Yes, of course we’ve seen signs before, and everyone’s tired of the phrase “green shoots of recovery”, but the retail market in Manchester being reported as being one of three areas in the country set for investment, and the new Nissan Juke being built on Wearside, securing hundreds of North East jobs (to name but two positive signs of growth), perhaps, at least in _space group’s home regions, we could finally be climbing, not falling. Could September then, mark the start of a new, more positive chapter in our economy?

This is the time of year that we’re also lucky enough to have some year out students working with the company, spread over our North East and North West offices, each one starting a new part of their lives. Not only are they working full time after spending a great amount of time in education, but they’re also getting to sit down and spend time understanding what it’s like to work in a busy, vibrant, design, build and operate business and really get to grips with what their careers will be like after they graduate.

In the next year, it is our job to give them all a full grounding in all aspects of the demanding, time poor but reward rich career that is architecture, and help them to develop both professionally and personally. Much like the positive hints we’ve seen on the economy and the impact of LEPs, the overriding factor in telling us how successful we are with these students is time.

At _space group, we always work hard to produce the best results for our customers, and that’s how we view all new members of our team – customers that we need to do our best to satisfy. Just like our customers, we’ll be asking them for feedback and working hard to improve in the areas where we feel we can, and just like our customers, we’re confident that we can deliver what they want, how they want it.

Our new recruits:

(l-r) Lisa Rogan, David Owen, Judith Forster, Imran Zulfqhar, Andrew Wilson and Ed Cutler, with Talent Manager Diane Charlton