Rebrands: transformation, evolution or anti-branding?

Author: CIMCOM

There are many ways to rebrand. Virgin V Festival, ALDI and Waterstones each embrace wholly different approaches. Firstly, V Festival adopts a multi-colour brand transformation for 2017. Then ALDI supermarkets move ahead with a sensible evolution of the familiar brand marque. While Waterstones bookshops defy accepted brand thinking with outlets that you wouldn’t know were Waterstones because the brand isn’t visible on the storefront. These are interesting times.

Utterly altered V Festival ID

The Virgin V Festival sponsored by Virgin Media has launched a refreshing new brand style that’s youthful, lively and bold by design. Commissioned by Festival Republic for the V Festival the new look was created by London design studio Form® to coincides with the festival’s 22nd year. Typography gets a celebratory circus treatment with multi-coloured lettering while the corporate Virgin brand gains prominence. 

V Festival welcomes 175,000 guest and 120 artists to its live music event each year. Until now the identity for this music festival, which takes place in simultaneously in Staffordshire and Chelmsford over an August weekend, was the red and white colours of the Virgin group. The previous incarnation of the brand used a playful script, with the dot of the letter ‘I’ being a love heart incorporating the Virgin Media logo.

Now the new identity features multi-coloured lettering, with an almost 3D feel. The agency Form® created the bespoke typography in collaboration with sign-writer Archie Proudfoot. It’ll be used across all marketing materials, signage, on social media and merchandise. 

Form explain their design rationale:

“We created a brave and celebratory visual identity to herald a new era for the festival. The logo incorporates a set of bespoke letterforms alongside the Virgin V which has been integrated to work harmoniously with the new direction and features a new colour palette developed to complement Virgin’s brand. The Virgin logo is encapsulated within a red balloon ellipse, a holding device that also affords flexibility to accommodate the Virgin group partner brand logos... We had previously discovered Archie’s work at an art fair and felt his approach – which hints at fairground and circus semiotics – were perfect to reflect the celebratory feel of the festival.”

A quiet evolution for ALDI

Supermarket chain ALDI Süd has unveiled a new logo for its retail operations which will be rolled out from June this year. The new logo was designed for the German retailer by Illion Markensocietaet. This modernisation of the brand identity is intended to provide a visual reminder of the modernisation of the brand itself, its redesigned stores and updated product range.

In the last ten years ALDI has transformed its operations from being the tenth largest UK supermarket player, to taking fifth place ahead of the Coop with 6.2% share of grocery trade and 1 million customers this year. Worldwide the brand now has 124,000 employees and over 5,600 branches in nine different countries.

The revised logo is already being used in China where the it’s supplemented by Chinese characters. They translate to ‘a place of discoveries and happiness’, while also sounding close to the German brand name. 

The logo is a subtle evolution of the current ALDI brand and takes the existing and colours and shapes forward. Blue, cyan, red, orange and yellow gain a new intensity of colour. The boxed in ALDI ‘A’ graphic device is set free from its box and reworked with a fluid 3D look. And the mono block lettering of ‘ALDI’ is given a more streamlined, dynamic feel.

It’s been over 10 years since the last update to the retailer’s visual identity. This uncontroversial brand refresh exemplifies the brands sensible and steady march from niche discounter to mainstream supermarket.  

Over the years, the ALDI brand has morphed in logical steps from its origins as ‘Karl Albrecht Foods’ from the Albrecht brothers, to the snappier ‘Albrecht’ which later became ALDI and gained its multi-coloured identity in 1982.

For fifty years ALDI has stuck to the same guiding principle: – to provide the very best quality products at prices that cannot be beaten. It’s discount concept relies on efficient workflows and a clear range which mixes basic necessities with seasonal and promotional items. Recently the brand has been criticised for making its delivery drivers unload their lorries on arrival, but it’s a practice which the brand says is essential to efficiency.

Investment in the business and an economic squeeze on consumers has helped the retailer to become a top 5 UK supermarket brand. It plans to shake up the top 4 players with a £300m UK store refurbishment programme and an expansion plan to add 70 new UK sites in 2017 and reach 1,000 UK stores by 2022, making this an opportune moment to update the brand.

Waterstones gets the anti-brand treatment

Three stores in the Waterstones bookshop chain have been experimenting with alternative identities. The shops portray the look and feel of independent booksellers with Waterstones branding barely visible. Having been introduced quietly over the last few years, in 2017 industry commentators took notice and triggered criticism of Waterstones for duping its customers. It begs the question: why create a strong memorable brand only to sideline it?

Founded in 1982, Tim Waterstone intended to build a chain of friendly, specialist bookshops starting with the first branch in Old Brompton Road, London. By 1989, WHSmith had bought a share of the brand, and then in 1998 HMV Media acquired the chain after it had bought Dillons. HMV rebranded the Dillons stores under the Waterstones livery in 1999.

Waterstones built its public profile and by 2005 Research Craft reported that the marque enjoyed 83% spontaneous brand awareness, ahead of its next nearest competitor with 74%. On behaviour measures too, the brand had made its way into our daily lives with 66% of people regularly shopping at Waterstones, again ahead of the nearest competitor with 51%.

Yet having expanded and swallowed up other bookstores it’s perhaps not surprising that in 2014 Waterstones explained that it was on a journey towards becoming a less corporate brand with new store openings since it had discovered that consumers pay more credence to book recommendations that are presented in a more individual, independent style than they would to a corporately branded recommendation badge.

The incognito brands:

• Southwold Books in Suffolk was launched in 2014, ostensibly as a local bookshop. On its website Waterstones explains the brand positioning: “Located in a much-loved Suffolk seaside town, Southwold Books is the dedicated local bookshop in the heart of a thriving coastal community.”
• The Rye Bookshop in East Sussex, then opened in 2015. Waterstones describes the store’s brand principles: “We're a quirky new shop on the bustling High Street, and we pride ourselves on operating with an independent ethos, which we hope does justice to Rye's wonderful literary heritage and eclectic tastes.”
• Harpenden Books in Hertfordshire, opened its doors most recently in 2016. It has a similar local focus, and Waterstones acknowledges its role within the brand family: “Harpenden Books is the dedicated local bookshop in the heart of this thriving community. We are a new addition to the Waterstones family, but whilst we are smaller than a standard Waterstones, we are exceptionally attractive and well stocked.”

The stores are tiny in comparison to the typical Waterstones store. For example, the Southwold store is 700sqft compared to the smallest Waterstones store of 2,500sq ft.

Given the brand’s understanding that the market values a more personal approach to bookselling, as well as the scaled down format of these stores that differentiate them from the average Waterstones, the anti-brand pseudo independent positioning is easy to comprehend. But perhaps a Waterstones sub-brand for the mini-stores would have been a more sustainable, honest and joined-up strategy.