Retiring a brand
How Informa retired
two big brand names
Graham-Jerome Ball, Director of Global Branding, Informa, explains how
Informa Markets retired strong legacy brands, UBM and Informa Exhibitions
ype ‘how to launch
a brand’ into your
favourite search
engine, and you’ll get
over one billion entries with tips,
tricks, examples and lots of brand
experts weighing in with their
experience of brand launches.
Type ‘how to retire a brand’, and
you’ll get fewer than 10% of that
number.
How come? It might be that in
branding, like in many other fields,
we prefer the new and the next
rather than looking in the rear-view
mirror. Perhaps talk of retiring
brands doesn’t feel as exciting or
compelling.
Also, in today’s world, where
the value of brand awareness and
advocacy is ever greater, businesses
tend to invest and commit to their
brands at a greater scale than ever
before.
There are, however, occasions
when a brand reaches the end of
its useful life or simply no longer
“It can be tempting
to rebrand as
quickly as possible,
without taking the
time to understand
position and value,
and to fully plan
how the rebranding
will play out”
24
Issue 1 2020
fits into a company’s positioning or
strategic business plan.
The decision then comes, whether
to shutter a brand entirely, or to
retire it and transition to a new one.
The key consideration is whether
the brand has an attribute that has
particular value or meaning to a
community or customer base, which
you wish to capture and transfer.
Good brands will, over time,
create a whole ecosystem of
customers, suppliers, business
partners and other interested parties
around them, whose interests,
needs and support must be fully
considered in the decision.
Two into one more powerful
brand
The decision to retire a brand is
not one to take lightly. It demands a
great deal of thought, planning and
sometimes courage; it is complex
and time-consuming, and it is just
as important to get right as a one-off
brand launch.
In 2019, within our exhibitions
business at Informa we retired two
brands at once – Informa Exhibitions
and UBM – and launched a powerful
successor brand – Informa Markets.
The brand Informa Exhibitions
dated back from the turn of the
century, not long after Informa
itself was formed and established
as a brand, while UBM had a
legacy dating back 100 years, and
a fascinating history of transitions
from newspapers and TV to business
media and events.
Both brands had built up a very
positive reputation with exhibitors,
customers, suppliers and colleagues,
which it was imperative to retain
Below: Informa
Markets: When
two became
one fresh, new
powerful brand
in whatever brand decision and
transition we chose.
Especially when acquiring
businesses, it can be tempting
to rebrand them as quickly as
possible, without taking the time to
understand their position and value,
and to fully plan how the rebranding
will play out in the wider world.
This brings the danger of brand
fatigue and loss of support among
the brand’s former advocates and
champions.
Transitioning to Informa Markets
In early 2019, we took the decision
to retire both brands and move to
Informa Markets for a number of
reasons. The most significant was
w w w.exhibitionworld.co.uk