Product and Brand Management Assignment

Product Rebranding

Brands Chosen
Vodafone Hero Honda Axis Bank

Hero Honda A joint venture between the Hero Group and Honda Motor Company was established in 1984 as the Hero Honda Motors Limited. Hero is the brand name used by the Munjal brothers for their flagship company Hero Cycles Ltd. Manjul family and Honda group both own 26% stake in the Company. Inspite of being one of the most successful joint ventures and strongest brands in the history of corporate India in 2010 Honda decided to move out of joint venture In March 2011, Hero Motors had hired global branding specialist Wolff Olins to come up with a new brand name and logo. In August 2011, the company was renamed Hero MotoCorp with a new corporate identity and logo. The rebranding exercise, which will be completed by 2014, will include stripping off the Honda tag from its products. The company also plans to enter new export markets like Latin America and West Asia with its new brand name. The company has also rehashed their taglines with intelligent word plays and puns like Hum Mein Hain Hero and A Billion Heroes, One Heartbeat to reassure the stakeholders about the new brand. Axis Bank Axis Bank formerly UTI Bank is a financial services firm that had begun operations in 1994, after the Government of India allowed new private banks to be established. The Bank was promoted jointly by the Administrator of the Specified Undertaking of the Unit Trust of India (UTI-I), Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), General Insurance Corporation Ltd., National Insurance Company Ltd., The New India Assurance Company, The Oriental

Insurance Corporation and United India Insurance Company UTI-I holds a special position in the Indian capital markets and has promoted many leading financial institutions in the country. The bank changed its name to Axis Bank and adopted a new logo in April 2007 to avoid confusion with other unrelated entities with similar name. Axis as a name connotes solidity and stature, and conveys a sense of authority and credibility. Graphically, in the new logo, the first stroke depicts forward growth while the second stroke signifies a solid support system. The two thick strokes also connote solidity and security. For the rebranding exercise, Axis Bank had tied up with Ogilvy & Mathers. The major objective was to convince people that the change was mostly restricted to the name alone. They had come up with the Everything is the same except the name and Twins, both equal to convince the stakeholders that only the name had changed and nothing else. The rebranding exercise also took into account that the confusions in rebranding could be made profit of by phishing sites and fraudsters.

Submitted by Jose Thomas 2010H149250P