Rebranding lessons of hibu / yell.com
Over the last couple of weeks yell.com has been rebranding as hibu. This is the latest example, in a very undistinguished line, of such rebranding failures.
When the best a CEO can muster about his companies' latest rebranding is this quote below you know the company is in deep, deep trouble.
'don't read anything into it....It doesn't have any pure meaning behind it. It needed to be short, easy to pronounce and to sound edgy and innovative. It doesn't mean a lot by itself, but if you turn the clock back, neither did Apple and Google or Yahoo!'
Mike Pocock is the CEO of hibu which in the latest example of rebranding has became the new name for Yell.com. Yell.com has been through at least a couple of major rebrands as it struggles to make any sense of it's Yellow Pages listing business model in the internet age. They recently acquired Moonfruit.com as a way of trying to help SMEs and their internet presence. hibu or as the company might have us write: hibü is the latest work from Landor - that purveyor of snake oil to companies with more shareholder money than sense. I am sure that the Landor team are seething as they read the quotes from the CEO on their beautiful retina displays.
The rebranding of hibu illustrates some of the key mistakes that are made far too often as a company makes the decision to rebrand and change name:
1. The new name doesn't mean anything to anyone:
This is most likely to have been dressed up as a benefit by the inventors of the brand hibu. It isn't. Given the companies massive financial issues they are not going to be able to afford a huge marketing budget to vest this meaningless word with brand associations. They may think that it is a positive move dropping all references and equity built up in Yell.com or indeed Yellow Pages but to eschew these assets is foolhardy. The fact that they have gone for the immediate rebrand, rather than a phased approach, again make the journey to establishing the new brand very hard. The rebrand has very little logic - this taken from the hibu website exemplifies the problem:
To meet the ever changing needs of our merchants and our consumers, we are transforming our business to be more digitally led. We are making it possible for our consumers to connect with our merchants how they want, whenever they want. We are developing innovative new products and a dynamic new brand signals that we are a digital business of the future. When people connect, communities thrive, and we are a vital connection in an ever changing world. That's why we have changed from Yell to hibu.
Now I may be missing something but this paragraph makes no sense as a logic for the rebranding. There is no reason why the move of the business into digital has delivered the name hibu, argubly Yell.com is a more digitally led name.
2. A brand optimised for the internet age and search?
I bet this was a big part of the pitch for rebranding. I'm sure Landor will have rolled out a 28 year old 'internet and search expert' to bamboozle the board with promises about how this name because of it's construction and newness was going to deliver exceptional power in ranking on Google. This is of course generally an absolute load of old tosh but is so common to hear now - it's the reason for the rash of names with a double "o" in them for example. There was an idea floating around that Google somehow favoured certain combination of letters because they were less competitive to rank on hence Ooyala and the like. The secret to ranking on Google is to deliver high quality content and make your pages search friendly - if anything non descriptive names make it harder to rank not easier.
3. Lack of engagement from the top down?
From the comments from top management in the press they don't seem that committed to the rebranding and this makes me suspect that the organisation hasn't been engaged in the hibu rebranding process. This is the most common mistake that is made when trying to change a culture, a name, or a business model. It's the people within the organisation that should feel vested in the new name and making it's promises come alive. However most engagement processes start with the brand book or internal roll out campaign once all the decisions have been made. Rebranding and brand renaming needs to come from within and this requires engagement in the process from the very beginning.
4. A brand name just trying too hard...
Like Consignia or Monday, hibu is a name that is just trying too hard. I know that's a very difficult thing to substantiate but there is something in these names that come from a process that is vested in focusgrouping and whiteboarding - they lack authenticity. They are artificial creations rather than really coming from a place of organisational difference. Apple as a brand name works for that organisation (or it used to) because it encapsulates the "think different" logic that was Steve Jobs' brilliance. Google works because it somehow embodies the geekiness of that organisation based on algorithms, advanced maths and technology. hibu is just trying to be cool and doesn't embody any of the attributes of that organisation.
Given their latest results are flatlining I think rebranding yell.com is very unlikely to be the knight in shining armour coming along to rescue and somehow give meaning to the company. Yell.com was a smart way of attempting to link the past with the future - it had a logic and could have had a personality. hibu doesn't mean anything to anyone and because of this it is facing an uphill struggle.
What do you think of this rebranding and renaming? Do you like the name hibu? Leave a comment below and get involved.
Justin