{"id":44896,"date":"2025-09-05T07:52:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T07:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/44896\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T07:52:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T07:52:09","slug":"oops-what-branding-flops-tell-us-about-the-companies-involved-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/44896\/","title":{"rendered":"Oops! What branding flops tell us about the companies involved \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aer Lingus<\/a> spent \u20ac2 million \u201ctilting\u201d the shamrock on the tail fin of its aircraft. Eircom<\/a> spent \u20ac16 million to lose three letters from its name (becoming Eir). Rebrands are expensive and the jury\u2019s out on whether they lead to improved financial performances. <\/p>\n

A recent US analysis of more than 200 rebranding announcements associated them with a modest increase in stock prices, but in more than 40 per cent of cases, they were followed by \u201cnegative abnormal returns\u201d.<\/p>\n

And when they flop, they can flop big. <\/p>\n

Jaguar\u2019s recent decision to dump its famed pouncing cat emblem in favour of a monogrammed circle, housing the letters J and r, which was launched alongside viral ads featuring androgynous models in a lift, was at best baffling.<\/p>\n

The ads didn\u2019t feature a car. <\/p>\n

The reboot was intended to align the luxury car brand with its new all-electric future but critics labelled it woke for abandoning automotive themes. <\/p>\n

\u201cJaguar cannot survive on a group of people who love the brand but don\u2019t buy the cars. F***ing lunacy,\u201d marketing guru Rory Sutherland said.<\/p>\n

Either way the campaign has failed to halt a decline in sales and last month saw the departure of long-time boss Adrian Mardell. <\/p>\n

Elon Musk<\/a>\u2019s wholesale evisceration of Twitter\u2019s cuddly <\/b>blue bird logo in favour of an ominous X was seemingly aimed at killing off whatever \u201cwoke\u201d credentials the company might have had.<\/p>\n

The X could signify a kiss or the skull-and-crossbones on cartoon bottles of poison.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s market value has plummeted since the rebrand but, like Tesla\u2019s sales, this probably has more to do with Musk\u2019s politics.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe old Eircom logo. <\/p>\n

References to X in the media are still frequently qualified with \u201cformerly Twitter\u201d, suggesting the new name lacks the cachet of the old one.<\/p>\n

Eircom\u2019s rebrand as Eir in 2015 was said to be the costliest rebrand in Irish corporate history.<\/p>\n

The roll-out included new uniforms for 1,500 technicians, 1,500 rebranded vehicles, 106 revamped stores, 6,000 TV adverts, 4,500 radio adverts and 2,100 outdoor posters.<\/p>\n

The new logo \u2013 written in cursive, lower case script \u2013 fell foul of the house style of most media groups, including this one, which typically capitalise proper nouns. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Aberdeen to abrdn and back: What companies should learn from the worst corporate rebrands everOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

This seemed to catch the company and its well-paid image consultants by surprise. There were heated conversations on the day of the launch.<\/p>\n

The name Eircom, introduced in 1999 in conjunction with the company\u2019s privatisation, was a clever grafting of Telecom \u00c9ireann (its former iteration) on to the dot.com train.<\/p>\n

Eir, a rebranding devised by international agency Moving Brands, which at the time included Google, Netflix and Sony among its clients, remains meaningless and bland. Fresh air, hot air, air on G-string, whatever.<\/p>\n

Eir\u2019s former name had, however, become sullied by a share price debacle and by a privatisation process that saw the company switch hands several times, loaded with debt and forced into examinership, a period that endeared it to no one other than its foreign owners.<\/p>\n

The new name was apparently the first one proposed to management and the whole rebranding exercise was conducted in 16 weeks, making it perhaps the fastest rebrand in Irish corporate history. <\/p>\n

\"\"Why are some independent Irish breweries turning off their taps and closing?<\/p>\n

In contrast, Aer Lingus\u2019s makeover consultants (New York creative consultancy Lippincott) are said to have worked on 50 shamrock redesigns before one was accepted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe logo retains but restyles the brand\u2019s shamrock, adding a slight tilt to symbolise \u2018dynamism and speed\u2019, with heart-shaped leaves reflecting the \u2018warmth and hospitality\u2019 of the brand,\u201d the company said. <\/p>\n

The airline\u2019s previous rebrand \u2013 back in 1996 \u2013 was equally safe, introducing a stem to the shamrock. Radical departures don\u2019t seem to be in the company\u2019s DNA. <\/p>\n

Coca-Cola rarely rebrands while rival Pepsi alters its look nearly every decade. Once Coca-Cola\u2019s main rival, Pepsi has now slipped out of the top three bestselling sodas in the US, suggesting another major rebrand may soon be on the way.<\/p>\n

The strange thing about the mother of all Irish branding flops, Guinness Light, is that it now looks like a product ahead of its time. <\/p>\n

The lighter stout was launched in 1979 when sales of Guinness among 18- to 24-year-olds were falling.<\/p>\n

The company ploughed millions into a massive marketing blitz that included TV ads of astronaut Neil Armstrong with a voiceover proclaiming, \u201cThey said it couldn\u2019t be done\u201d.<\/p>\n

But it fell flat and was discontinued two years later and has become a template for branding misfires. <\/p>\n

The succeeding decades years have ironically seen the launch of multiple light beer products and more recently a spate of zero-alcohol alternatives. <\/p>\n

Diaego has pumped \u20ac60 million into developing and expanding Guinness Zero since its launch in 2021.<\/p>\n

From a commercial perspective, standing out from the crowd is difficult and it\u2019s understandable why many companies frequently get it wrong and why others tinker only sparingly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aer Lingus spent \u20ac2 million \u201ctilting\u201d the shamrock on the tail fin of its aircraft. Eircom spent \u20ac16…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[2442,79,6877,8970,18,1647,11545,19,17,879],"class_list":{"0":"post-44896","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-aer-lingus","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-coca-cola","11":"tag-eir","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-elon-musk","14":"tag-guinness","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-x"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}