Introduction
Xerox, which is one of the prominent brands in the copier market, underwent a major brand renovation in order to maintain its place as the best copier company in the market. Branding is the naming, terming, assigning, symbolizing or designing of a product to make it prominent and distinguishable in the market compared to other products. Branding and positioning go hand in hand; positioning is to locate the product or formulate an image of the product in the minds of the target market of the product. The purpose of branding is not just to sell your product, but to ensure that the customers see your product as the only one that fulfills their needs.
Re-branding
Pros and Cons
Re-branding is quite critical because just a little slip can turn the entire success into a failure. Re-branding gives a completely novel and refreshing look to the products and the company as a whole; however, this new image can either attract or even repel the customers. With the help of re-branding, Xerox can work on targeting a different section of the audience, which can help in broadening or even narrowing down the customer base of the company (Kiley, 2008). Additionally, it shows that Xerox is open to change and is ready to mold itself depending on external environmental factors. But on the flip side, not only will random customers be confused and consider the new brand to not be affiliated with Xerox due to their lack of knowledge regarding the company, the customers might also become worried about the stability of the company, causing harm to its image.
The New Xerox Logo – Competitive Advantage and different market segments
This brand makeover was the first in 40 years of Xerox; it aimed to make the customers see Xerox in an unusual light. There were changes in the Xerox logo, the product design and even the product names. The logo has been changed to new a red-colored one with a font with softer rounded corners along a sphere with connection graphical ribbons on it, which spins at animated platforms such as the internet. The font is supposed to signify that Xerox is an approachable company with fewer technicalities and rigidity, plus more flexibility; while the sphere shows that Xerox is available all around the world and that the customers, stakeholders and employees throughout the world are connected tightly with one another. Xerox claims that this logo provides them admission into the media landscape; and this factor along with the approachability will become Xerox’s competitive advantage (Bulik, 2008). Xerox also tries to portray that it is an innovative, flexible, progressive and radical enterprise; which, it believes, will become its competitive advantage as compared to the other products and companies in the market. Since the beginning, Xerox’s image was much clearer in North America compared to Asia, Europe and other developing countries; therefore, the new brand took greater time to make an impact in the latter countries. This was also because the new Xerox logo was universal; that is, it was not adjusted for any geographical differences. However, statistics proved that the new Xerox look was much appreciated by customers even in these slightly immature markets.
Conclusion
The reason why Xerox planned to bring about this change was to attract new customers and make the existing customers even more loyal; thus, it was critical for Xerox to evaluate the customer reaction. For that purpose, several surveys, interviews and focus groups were launched, which helped Xerox in analyzing whether the step of re-branding was a success or a failure. Results revealed that the customers had started making strong associations between Xerox and the qualities such as dependable, traditional and established (Paul, 2008). Xerox will now focus on strengthening upon these characteristics associated with the company and improving the impression of other products. Therefore, it is easy to conclude that re-branding was a positive step taken by Xerox.
References
Bulik, B S. (2008); Xerox overhauls brand image. B to B. Chicago; Proquest database.
Kiley, D. (2008); Xerox Gets a Brand Makeover. Web.
Paul F. (2008); Xerox Softens Image in Brand Overhaul; Baseline, New York. Web.