Re-Branding

Virgin Blue, the cheeky, the innovative and low cost airline rebranded last week and is now called Virgin Australia. Did they just grow up or are they after something else with the new name? They announced their arrival in the tumultuous times of 911 and the Ansett collapse a decade ago and a lot of people thought the only reason they survived the early day was this fortuitous timing. No one believed they had a chance, had both Qantas and Ansett been around to squash their ambitions. After all, the runways were littered with the carcasses of start ups like Compass 1 and 2 along with Ausair, Horizon and others who failed to grab the imagination of the travelling public and who had come up against the opposition yield managers making sure their business strategy became linked to a cost sensitive public.

So a decade later Virgin Blue becomes Virgin Australia to the strains of multiple marketing videos and tweets espousing the virtues of the new entity. It's a marketing plan aimed squarely at the corporate market with new livery, new business class configuration and aspirations of taking the high flyers from Qantas. Without a fight, I don't think so, and it will be interesting as both heads of the airlines square up and fight this battle in the media. After all it's not always about the hardware in the air or on the ground, it's often about the emotional bias of brand recognition and who the traveller relates to and wants to be seen with. Not forgetting the ubiquitous nature of the frequent flyer programs which will no doubt find ways to offer up new incentives to stay.

Not all rebrands have worked regardless of how much money has been thrown at them. Think about Anderson's change to Accenture which meant nothing to any of their clients and cost an estimated $100 million in lost revenue. Even one of the world's most recognised brands, Coca Cola got it wrong with their "New Coke" causing consternation among the faithful, having to finally get back to the "Classic Coke" to appease the crowd. My favourite amongst the rebranded screw ups was the SciFi Channel rebranding to SyFy and finding out in most parts of the world SyFy was a shortening for syphilis.

So will the "Big Red" perform better in all white? Will the staff take on a new culture of corporate appeal versus the old Branson cheek? How will Virgin Australia measure if the change has been successful? Which company will bring onboard the first big testimonial of changing from the old Qantas guard to the crisp white opposition?

Branding is a tricky thing and the scope of meaning, influence, emotional attachment and success will ultimately lie with the product and the people behind it. The big question will be if Virgin Australia has made a big enough change within it's own workforce to encourage a big enough change in the corporate workforce to embrace a new player at the front end?

Perhaps Virgin Australia can take heart from that little Macintosh company that changed it's name to Apple. In the latest Millward Brown global Brandz list of the top 100 brands, Apple has overtaken Google as the number one global brand with a brand equity worth $157 Billion. That's a lot of business class seats.