Essay Sample on Marketing: Key to Success for Organizations

Introduction

Marketing is a vital tool in any organization for creating awareness and publicity for its products and services. Through marketing, a wide range of distribution and consumers are designed and developed, which reflects into profits and growth of the organization. Branding creates the main image of the organization, which has a psychological effect on consumers. It makes easy identification of products to current consumers and also plays a significant role in winning the attention of interested consumers.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Mistakes Made by Weight Watchers During Rebranding

Creating a brand takes time and resources. Weight Watchers being an already established organization with an already existing market niche, would have been more strategic to build the existing brand. The rebranding comes with a lot of changes. It may alter with the theme color and logos, which may also be perceived by the consumer to be changes in the services or products produced.

The time right after the Winter holidays and before summer is when diet brands need to work hard to ensure that they attract new members and retain loyal customers. Unfortunately, Weight Watchers decided to rebrand to 'WW,' which also meant getting a new logo and coming up with a new tagline, which stated, "Wellness That Works." (Hearn, 2019). The overall purpose of the brand also became altered.

The Weight Watchers' marketing strategy was fragile to retain the existing market and bring more consumers on board. The top management did not select proper marketing materials, so the communication could not be decoded accurately by their audience about the changes (Hearn, 2019). The connection between the previous and new identities was not entirely evident. It felt as though the company was new and not the Weight Watchers that customers were already accustomed to (Miller, Merrilees & Yakimova, 2013). Brand awareness was lost when they could not make a connection between the two identities.

Ensuring Smooth Transition when Rebranding

A few lessons can be learned from Weight Watchers' case. Before rebranding, it is important first to spread awareness. A company should consider overspreading the awareness to ensure that the link between the new brand and the old one is evident. The consumers need to know about these changes before the company can introduce them. The reason behind the change should be well communicated as well (Hearn, 2019). This move will increase an attraction towards the brands as the consumers will understand the additional benefits they should expect.

A company needs to introduce changes gradually. There is no need for simply bringing in a complete change at once. The rebranding can be done in steps where the tagline is changed first before the logo (Miller, Merrilees & Yakimova, 2013). That move will help the customers to associate the old brand with the new one since they will get time to notice the changes that are being made. The company should maintain its good reputation, as well. The change should not be linked with any negative effects on product quality. It is also essential to avoid losing the company's purpose by going towards products that were previously not being offered by the company.

Conclusion

The dramatic loss in stock that Weight Watchers experienced was due to the wrong rebranding technique. The process was done in a single change, which left consumers feeling confused. There was not enough awareness about the change in the environment. Also, the company made a change in its product offering, which impacted its customer base. It is important to avoid such an occurrence by carrying out brand awareness before any change is made.

References

Hearn, I. (2019). What Marketers Can Learn from WW's Rebrand Troubles. Retrieved from https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/what-marketers-can-learn-from-wws-rebrand-troubles

Miller, D., Merrilees, B., & Yakimova, R. (2013). Corporate Rebranding: An Integrative Review of Major Enablers and Barriers to the Rebranding Process. International Journal Of Management Reviews, 16(3), 265-289. doi: 10.1111/ijmr.12020