Another UK brand has rebranded. Abbey National was a mutual organisation that became a bank... and went quite badly wrong. Now its rebranded itself as just "Abbey" with all sorts of claims about how its changed. (I've blogged more on Abbey here).

This reminds me of a very intensive personal development workshop I was on. Over 4 days with not much sleep, a group of us got to know each other really well, and had no real contact with the outside world. Towards the end, the facilitators gave us some great advice: don't go back to your family telling them how much you've changed - instead, ask them how they've been doing. If you have really changed, then they will sense that for themselves - and maybe they will tell you.

This is probably good advice for companies too, yet too often great energy goes into narcissistic bragging that may only raise expectations which are dashed by reality. If a brand is better, why does it need to shout about it... wouldn't it be more confident to let us realise for ourselves? posted by Johnnie M, 9:16 AM  permalink