Summary
Psion is a 30-year-old company, and part of UK technology history; its business originally being in the consumer markets with the famous Psion Organiser products. In 2000, Psion acquired a company called Teklogix, an industrial computer hardware manufacturer and vendor, and the joint Psion Teklogix brand was created. At this time the business left the consumer market and moved entirely to the B2B market to focus on rugged, mobile solutions.
Sadly, the new business did not flourish as well as it had done historically, and in 2008, John Conoley was appointed as the CEO and set about a radical restructuring and revitalisation of the business.
Work to determine a new business strategy was begun and that included a serious marketing focus. It became clear that the conjoined brand was failing the company in many critical areas, and while rebranding is never to be entered into lightly, this time it was a business imperative.
A strategy to revitalise and optimise the brand was developed, and submitted to Psion’s Board in June of 2010. The board agreed to the strategy including the need to drop the Teklogix name. Work on rebranding the business could begin.
About Psion
Psion is the pioneer of quality mobile handheld computers and their application in industrial markets around the world. Psion has been an innovator in mobile computing since 1980, starting with the invention of the PDA, through to helping global customers solve their business problems today. Psion customers include Volkswagen, SNCF, RWE nPower, E.ON, BMW, Goodyear, Copenhagen Airports, BNSF, and many others.
Through its new open innovation business model, Psion has the ability to work directly with customers and partners to co-create new variants of mobile hardware, software and services that meet the specific needs of the marketplace. This collaboration is made possible by Psion’s open innovation community site: www.ingenuityworking.com.
Psion plc is a public company listed on the London Stock Exchange. It is headquartered in London with corporate offices located in Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Africa.
Strategy
Broader business issues the company is facing
Psion is a 30 year old company, and a part of UK Technology history, its business originally being in the consumer markets with the famous Psion Organiser products. In 2000, Psion acquired a company called Teklogix, an industrial computer hardware manufacturer and vendor, and the joint Psion Teklogix brand was created. At this time the business left the consumer market and moved entirely to the B2B market to focus on rugged, mobile solutions.
Sadly, the new business did not flourish as well as it had done historically, and in 2008, after several changes of leadership John Conoley was appointed as the CEO and set about a radical restructuring and revitalisation of the business.
Work to determine a new business strategy was begun and that included a serious marketing focus. A chief marketing officer (Nick Eades), was appointed and subsequently a brand director (Dave Davies).
Among many other urgent changes, it was very clear that the conjoined brand was failing the company in many critical areas. And while re-branding is never to be entered into lightly, this time it was a business imperative.
Brand research was conducted and this clearly showed that the conjoined brand was confusing in key markets, adversely affecting recognition and recall. Even a simple Google search revealed that while ‘Psion’ achieved over 5M results, ‘Teklogix’ only gained 1.2M.
In parallel, the whole mission, vision and values of the company were totally redefined, and a theme of ‘adaptive ingenuity’ became the summary term for everything we would do (and become) in the new company. This gave added context and credence to the need to develop a new and compelling brand identity for the company. It had change so substantially, that just returning to the old Psion brand who have been totally inappropriate. A strategy to revitalise and optimise the brand was developed, and submitted to the board in June of 2010. The board agreed to the strategy including the need to drop the Teklogix name. Work on rebranding the business could begin.
Psion is a company in transformation, and the re-branding has to be seen in that greater context. As part of this process, Psion has completely reinvented its commercial proposition, its routes to market, channel program and its unique social media strategy (community based) which is already a case study with both Forrester and IDC.
The company operates in 14 countries, and is faced two substantially large competitors, both which are US-based multinationals. Psion, as a UK company, has to report in Sterling, with the majority of its revenues and costs, in Euros and Dollars, respectively. This creates an FX challenge in itself.
For many years the business had been in decline, for many reasons, but in 2010 it started its return to health, with a stronger P&L, lower costs and renewed purpose. The rebranding sent a strong signal, internally and externally, that we were ready for the next chapter.
So the broader business issues we face are all about creating a differentiated, profitable, global business in a tricky economic climate, and two heavyweight competitors.
How did this campaign aim to address this and add value to the business on a more general level?
The re-branding campaign signalled that Psion had emerged from the recession with a new, clear, cool corporate brand identity. Because of a strategy of leveraging social media to transform the business, the new brand was deliberately designed to work very effectively in digital and social media.
It was previewed in late 2010 to Psion’s business partners in Dallas, Rome, Singapore and Shanghai, and the response was entirely positive. We did the same with employees around the same time, but also showed the employees videos of the partner reactions, to underscore the external validation of the strategy. Again, the reaction was, and is, very positive.
The target audience
The re-branding had to appeal to all of Psion’s key stakeholders; it was a very holistic activity, with partners, customers, employees, shareholders, etc. Each of these constituents had their own issues.
-Partners: They wanted something easy to sell, that created more value (margin) and differentiated. We made available as many brand assets as possible to them, via our Partner Portal, as well as easing them into it via the Partner Conference, almost four months before the launch.
-Customers: The Psion offering had become fuzzy and misunderstood, with a real risk of becoming commoditised. The new strategy, and uniquely modular/adaptable products, was encapsulated in the new brand, helping to address many such issues at the same time.
-Employees: The majority of employees at time were originally from Teklogix, so morale was low, communication had been poor, and strategy unclear. The re-branding positively addressed all these negative factors and because we did not simply recycle the old Psion brand, it felt new and exciting for everyone.
-Shareholders: They had seen a declining share price through 2008 (when the company’s valuation was less than the cash it had in the bank) and were starting to get concerned. Shareholders are cautious about the costs of any major transformational campaign, and “re-branding” is often seen as an expensive extravagance. However, in this case, it was very clear that the existing branding was part of the problem.
Media, channels or techniques used
The core media is digital and social media, supported by PR, AR and IR activity, with a substantial employee engagement program. Digital was central to the re-branding because it allowed us to be far more contemporary than any of our competitors, thereby creating immediate stand-out and differentiation.
Our social media strategy is centred on IngeniutyWorking.com and the new brand campaign very clearly ‘lived’ in around this community, which has ~60,000 visitors a month, and allowed everyone in it to discuss, debate and engage with the ‘new company’ with the highest possible degree of openness.
There was no direct offer, but the call to action was to experience the new company strategy in action via IngenityWorking.com
Timescales of the campaign
July 2009: Planning, preparation, agency search, appointment of FutureBrand and research agencies (Jigsaw Research and MarketBridge).
August-December 2009: Customer and business partner research, and competitive research programmes.
Brand identity brain storming sessions, Initial brand identity development including core messaging, vision and values.
January-February 2010: Logo and other brand identity elements in development.
March: IngenuityLive social media site launched.
March-August 2010: New brand identity, visuals and guidelines development.
Employee engagement program (‘Switch On’) developed and run through to second half of 2010.
Product branding plans developed and finalised.
June 2010: Initial brand concepts, vision, values approved by Psion Board.
September 2010: Re-brand previewed with and enthusiastically supported by business partners in conferences in Europe, North America. Also shown to and welcomed by Psion employees at the same time. Customer and business partner research conducted in the UK, Germany, France and North America.
October-December 2010: Re-brand previewed with and positively received by business partners and employees in Singapore and Shanghai.
Brand materials including guidelines finalised, global marketing briefed, artwork distributed. ‘Brand
Centre’ intranet site set up, and Brand Council established to manage and advise. New double-sided business cards distributed to key employees. Other stationery changes underway.
January 2011: New brand launched. All websites updated, press releases issued.
January-June 2011: Re-brand of Psion offices in hand (temporary branding was installed immediately following launch).
Results
Partner Surveys from the Rome and Dallas conferences showed the following results:
-Psion’s planned rebranding and new logo is positive: 93 per cent agreed or strongly agreed
– The new branding is positive: 95 per cent agreed or strongly agreed.
– The new strategy will improve the way that Psion does business with its partners: 88 per cent agreed orstrongly agreed that Psion’s Open Source Mobility strategy will fundamentally change the industry.
Psion now has an industry-leading and growing social media presence via its open and collaborative community, www.ingenuityworking.com, with over 60,000 visitors a month and more than 5,000 active discussions. It was launched in March 2010 and has quickly become the industry’s leading social media site where customers, partners, resellers and developers all converge to share ideas, fix problems and create business opportunities.
The annual employee survey showed that Psion’s vision, values and adaptive ingenuity were now the strongest drivers of employee morale across the business.
Client testimonial
“Our research showed that we had to remove the word “Teklogix” from our name, to unite the business around one, clear, global identity, we found that the complexity of the dual company name was impacting our business by confusing our customers, resellers and other key stakeholders, especially in new markets for Psion. We also took the opportunity to refresh the brand to make it properly mirror our business strategy and to work better in the digital world.”
John Conoley, CEO, Psion PLC
“The new brand truly reflects everything that the company now stands for, which is crucial. The work done was very complete and very logical, and achieved within very tight budget constraints. We now have a brand identity that is ambitious, relevant and positively differentiated, even cool. Our partners,
customers and employee all now know what we do, and why.”
Nick Eades, CMO, Psion PLC
