The new brand includes a new advertising campaign, developed with agency Truant London, which launches today. The campaign highlights the tech business’ move from being seen as a conference call provider to its new focus on web meetings.
For marketing director Simon Prince, the catalyst for the overhaul has been the change in what customers expect from meetings technology, and the way in which the brand’s products have evolved to meet that expectation.
“It’s the perfect opportunity to look at how we position our products,” he told B2B Marketing. “We’ve always had a brand that’s challenging, pioneering and different, so it’s happened quite organically. Because our brand was always talking about a different way of doing communications, that enabled us to build a different product set, and then we gave the brand a reboot to make it even more relevant in 2018.”
It marks the latest step in a conscious move away from its confrontational – yet award-winning – campaigns in favour of a more positive message.
“Brands grow up and mature,” says Simon. “We went through our rebellious teenage years, and we’re now in young adulthood. It’s always nicer to take positive messages to market, and to show people the benefits. As a brand we made a conscious decision to become an empowering and challenging brand, rather than a critiquing challenger brand.
“It has a stronger empathy with the customer – people enjoy being told they’re working in the right ways and they like being shown new ways of working – rather than the wry, mickey-taking that we used to do. That change has happened over the past few years.”
At the heart of the proposition
The hope is the new brand will resonate on an emotional level with customers and prospects by putting them at the heart of the proposition.
Simon says: “I don’t really believe in either B2C or B2B these days, it’s B2P [business-to-people]. I’m just trying to deal with people – whether they’re at work or at play they can still respond to a message in a positive way if it empathises with them. We put people at the heart of the messaging, champion the way they work, the effective ways they can communicate, and make them believe there is a smarter way to communicate.”
This is why the new campaign is leading on product rather than the rebrand itself. As important as brand is, customers are far more interested in tools that’ll help them get the job done, says Simon.
His advice to other marketers undertaking a rebrand is to start with the customer, and understand the relationship you have with them. You also need to be brave and single-minded in your ability to deliver, as everyone’s got an opinion on marketing and the belief they can do it better.
Simon adds as a final important ingredient. “Just have fun. Building new products, changing the way the company is, and then rebranding it for market is the best thing you can do as a marketer. And our teams are having a lot of fun doing this.”
