Business Advantage - Talking about brand name

Improve your Business English with Business Advantage. In this clip from the Upper-intermediate level of the course Aviva Global Brand Manager talks about managing business brand and the challenges of rebranding. Learn more about Business Advantage at peo.cambridge.org

Aviva as a business has actually been

around for about 300 years in different

forms and different company names and

about 10 years ago we were about 50

different brand names all across the

world world across our different markets

and we realized that that was a pretty

inefficient way of operating as a

business and that by combining together

to act more as one business throughout

the world and having it one brand name

to sort of signify that unity around the

world it was pretty critical to start to

adopt I'm one single name

the name of Eva didn't come from a

business it wasn't that we decided to

take the name from one market and apply

it everywhere we actually found new name

so we went to research a new name that

could work in every market that meant

positive things but also didn't really

mean anything

would any of this have happened to me

but is still being Richard Starkey way

Negroes people know Walter Willis have

got to play the leading man sometimes a

change in name is more than a change of

me sometimes it's a chance to show the

world you've always wanted to be the

Aviva name first appeared I think in

2002 and that's when Aviva PLC was

formed and that's when we started being

listed as a Viva on the London Stock

Exchange and our smaller market started

to adopt name Aviva from that point on

however we left our three largest

businesses therefore our three largest

brands they kept their original names so

they they were norwich union in the UK

hibernian in ireland and commercial

union in poland so we left those three

brands all with their original names and

it was only in 2009 2010 were those

brands finally migrated to the Aviva

name the reason hibernian norwich union

and commercial union in ireland UK and

poland kept their names was because they

were the largest brands the largest

businesses and therefore they carried

the most risk to move from their names

to the new Aviva name however in 2007 we

had a new CEO Andrew moths and he one of

his new things really was introducing

this new vision for the business which

was about Warren Aviva which is about

truly harnessing the power of having one

brand name all over the world

the logo I think may originally have

referenced an old norwich union logo and

but to be honestly it was something that

was created for Aviva very much thinking

about the future of the business overall

the biggest risk when changing your name

is that you're going to lose people

along the way that they're not going to

know that you've changed your name or

they're going to be confused so what you

need to do is be very clear with

communication all the way along the way

to mitigate that risk by telling people

that you're going to change your name

and just trying to be as clear as

possible

we announced it to the city first of all

then we introduce some advertising to

tell people were going to change our

name then we wrote to all of our

different customers so they all had a

specific communication telling them

about the name change and then more

advertising talking about the name

change and then additional advertising

talking about what kind of brand Aviva

was going to be and therefore what they

should expect from a brand experience of

viva

the benefits of having one name all over

the world are manifold Spellacy I think

a big one is about having one brand name

although all over the world makes us

appear as warm brown one business one

force to be reckoned with all over the

world I think you know with the world's

fifth largest insurance company people

tend to perceive that we're very UK

heavy and we are forty percent of our

businesses here but a lot of our

business is elsewhere and I think it was

an opportunity to make ourselves make

Aviva see much more of a global player

similarly I think it was an opportunity

to revitalize the brand I think our

previous legacy brands were very strong

I'm talking specifically hear about

norwich union hibernian commercial union

because the other businesses has already

changed the Aviva name but they were

very strong but they were very and seen

generally as quite old and old fashioned

and quite stayed almost and you know

we're an insurance company that's a

that's a natural preconception so I

think actually it's an opportunity to

revitalize the brand and to give more

energy and yeah vitality a 222 Aviva as

the perceptions of Aviva as a business

and obviously there are also big cost

efficiencies for having one name all

over the world in lots of different ways

just means that we are able to really

make the most of our buying power make

the most of our selling power make the

most of systems and operations and

websites and all these different reasons

why it makes so much more sense to have

one name one way of doing things all

throughout the world

I think one of the biggest challenges in

managing a brand for financial service

company versus a project that you pick

up in a supermarket is that particularly

with insurance actually is that your

interactions with that brand of very few

so if you're a tin of beans you know

people go into the supermarket and they

pick up that tin of beans no once a week

they eat that tin of beans once or twice

a week they have much more interactions

with it financial services particularly

insurance what you make one renewal a

year or you know it's just the statement

that you receive in the post the rest of

the time we're not interacting with the

brand or when people do interact with us

it's when they're calling to make a

claim or make a complaint or a square

there why their rates have gone down so

it it's that's the biggest challenge is

that how can we build a brand with very

few level numbers of numbers of

interactions and how can we help it to

be a very positive experience when

actually dealing an insurance company is

quite transactional boring thing

you

I think the risk of rebranding a

well-known companies it's well known so

you're going away from something that's

a staple something that you know

everyone knows about and then going to

something completely new I think the

reason they were rebranding this case

was because they had different

businesses and different places around

the world which is something I didn't

realize when I knew norwich union had

changed that am I never really

understood why and I'm one of their

clients I want their customers so I

think in that case it was trying to bind

together a company with lots of

different names and different identities

in different places which that makes a

certain amount of sense it's like we're

decorating a house just just because it

looks nice doesn't mean it can't use a

better coat of paint if I go abroad I

like to know that my company my bank my

my sort of my restaurant anything that I

like so much I can go get the exact same

thing in a different country