With multiple tourism brands and a name that most German consumers associated with supermarkets, Rewe Group was looking to help its brands differentiate themselves in the travel sector while capitalizing on the strength of its portfolio. Interbrand Cologne, building on the organization’s core values of strong customer focus, product variety, high quality and personalization, helped Rewe rebrand its tourism division.

The group currently operates Germany’s largest tourism retail sales network, making it an international leader in tourism, but a well-defined brand system was needed. To build clarity, as well as brand awareness and recognition, Rewe Touristik and DER are now DER Touristik.

Meaning “the” in German, DER linguistically simplifies the complex network of travel businesses under one bold name with a strong visual identity Interbrand Cologne has developed. Committed to creating individual customer experiences, with customized trips “built on dreams” or “Täume fest im Griff,” DER Touristik is the umbrella brand for Rewe’s many tour operators and travel agencies.

Merging sales channels, presenting a new digital portal at der.com and internal brand engagement efforts, Lars Bolle, Group Brand Manager of the new DER Touristik says, “The new system will then initiate a brand-driven transformation of the company both internally and externally. " The company’s travel agencies, for example, will transform themselves from traditional offices with brochure-lined walls to modernized shops offering customized travel.

Jens Grefen, Creative Director at Interbrand Cologne, explains, “Individual customer needs and unique travel experiences and consulting are the primary focus of DER Touristik and its brands - all of which are brought to life through the new visual identity. The complexity of the travel experience is made unique and distinctive through a living system. The use of the color red, currently not applied in the tourism marketing environment, makes DER Touristik the new red travel brand."

Amy Edel-Vaughn is Interbrand's Community Manager.

Premiering on Wall Street Journal Live and The Telegraph, UK-based TRACC has produced a video about Interbrand. Working with Interbrand's Global Marketing & Communications team over the last year, the video features our senior leadership explaining why, in today's global marketplace, creating and managing brands as business assets is more important than ever before.

Featured is an interview with Eileen Lynch, Head of Global Brand Strategy for Thomson Reuters. Lynch says, “Probably one of the most significant changes that has occurred in the way we run our business as a result of the relationship with Interbrand is actually appreciating the value of a brand.”

As a branding firm dedicated to helping clients distill and market their value sets, purpose and brands to the public, it is always an exciting opportunity when we get to flip the switch and zoom in on the Interbrand brand. Founded in 1974, Interbrand's culture and history is a rich and long one.

While built largely through acquisition over the years, our path has echoed the counsel we often provide to our clients. Anticipate the changing needs of markets and adapt accordingly.

Interbrand's founder, John Murphy, started the firm as a naming company. Realizing the opportunity to provide a strategic focus, as well as a design, to the products he was naming, the practice expanded to include logo & package design, brand strategy and brand valuation. Today, Interbrand is the largest branding consultancy in the world, yet it retains Murphy's entrepreneurial spirit.

In the video Interbrand's senior leadership team describes our unique disciplines, offerings, culture and people. As Andy Payne, Interbrand's Global Chief Creative Officer, often says, “These are not only our principles, but the ingredients of world-changing brands.” As the relationship between brands and consumers constantly evolves, having these principles top of mind is key to staying ahead of trends and evolving markets. Here's to our belief that the next 40 years will be just as exciting as the first.

Thank you to TRACC staff and crew as well as the Interbrand staff who helped to produce this video.

Lindsay Beltzer is Senior Associate, Global Marketing & Communications.

The best performances of the year were honored last night, but the most disputed act seems to be that of host Seth MacFarlane—was he a hit, a miss or something in between?

In case you missed it: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) chose MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy and Ted, to be the host of the 85th annual Academy Awards in a rather obvious effort to rebrand the show as relevant to younger audiences. In our previous post, we wrote that MacFarlane faced a three-pronged challenge: to channel the old school sophistication for which the show is known, advance the AMPAS’ new brand vision, and to maintain his own personal brand in the process.

Since our last writing, the AMPAS made another change, though it was so subtle many viewers may have missed it. For the first time in history, the AMPAS branded the show “The Oscars,” its informal nickname, rather than its official moniker, “The Academy Awards.” Other additions, like a show theme (music in film) and pre-taped comedy segments, prove the Academy has been thinking of ways to spice things up while leveraging the lesser-known talents of its host.

The AMPAS acknowledged from the start of the show that the comedian was an unconventional choice whose performance could go either way: as part of MacFarlane’s opening monologue, Captain Kirk beamed in “from the future,” chastising him for his ensuing flubs and showing reviews from the next day declaring him the “worst host in history.” A clever tactic, as it afforded MacFarlane the opportunity to push the envelope and then redeem himself, reverting back to old school showmanship, complete with Broadway-style singing and dancing.

It’s a compelling combination of dashing and devilish, one that had the potential to evolve the Oscars brand. Yet, MacFarlane’s performance, and the strategy driving it, was puzzlingly scattered, making us laugh as often as we cringed. Not surprisingly, real reviews—not from Captain Kirk—were mixed. Here’s our take.

The good:

MacFarlane crooned the classics and tap-danced with ease. He seemed fully invested and genuinely enthusiastic in even the most over-the-top sketches, like his visit from Kirk or his homage to The Sound of Music—attributes that are on-brand for the Oscars as we’ve known it.

His commentary around cut jokes appearing on the teleprompter and follow-ups when jokes fell flat made for a fast-paced, anything-can-happen vibe that brought the show into fresher territory. For example, the line about Django Unchained’s R-rated language being based on Mel Gibson’s voicemails was booed by the audience, but the follow up, “Oh, so you’re on his side?” saved the moment. Of course, he had some universally funny moments, like making Tommy Lee Jones laugh within the first two minutes of the show and delivering good-hearted jokes about Ben Affleck’s nomination snub.

The bad:

Some blasted MacFarlane’s joke about John Wilkes Booth and his reenactment of The Sound of Music scene as tasteless; others found them to be funny, or at least fair play. Still, some jokes seem to be universally off-putting, like Ted the bear’s bit about being Jewish in Hollywood, MacFarlane’s badly timed joke about women losing weight for the ceremony and a lazy lob about mistaking Denzel Washington for Eddie Murphy.

Even if your tolerance for boundary-pushing humor is sizable, we think MacFarlane failed to pick his moments of shock and dismay, and balance them with more good-natured humor, like Poehler and Fey did at the Golden Globes. Overall, this lack of balance undermined the Oscars’ legacy of class and glamour.

Let’s not forget that MacFarlane isn’t the only guy writing his jokes—both the good and the bad—nor is he responsible for some of the broadcast’s more awkward moments, like when the orchestra started playing the Jaws theme song to cut a heartfelt acceptance speech short or a sock puppet reenactment of the movie Flight. There’s a team of people—hired by the AMPAS—producing every word, action and musical cue of the night.

It seems to us that the Academy made a common branding mistake: a strategy seems firm on paper, but execution wanders hopelessly “off brief,” perhaps because of a weak premise, bad planning or inadequate foresight. The Academy set out to be funny and provocative, but without defining what kind of funny, how provocative, and in what way, we’re left feeling like we saw a movie before it hit the editing room.

Evolving the brand is great, but the Academy must not leave the Oscars’ identity behind. At its core it’s a production: a velvet-curtained, perfectly orchestrated show that we only get to experience once a year—not a skit, and certainly not a rehearsal.

Let’s call this year a rough cut of the AMPAS’ new, and not entirely flawed, strategy and hope next year we get to see the final.

Darcy Newell and Jennifer Vano are Consultants in Verbal Identity for Interbrand New York.

If you think sales in Europe are going to take the EcoBoost out of Ford’s overall momentum you haven’t seen Ford’s fourth-quarter profit results. Ford surpassed analysts' estimates significantly, announcing they had earned $0.39/share on revenue of $32.40 billion. An approximate 10% beat on earnings and a 2.5% beat on revenue.

While you might have missed, or not cared about, the quarterly numbers, if you own a television set you probably haven’t missed Ford’s “Go Further” campaign. Though it might have been free of Ford’s signature blue oval, it still rose to the top of Ad Age’s Viral Video chart with almost three million views in a week.

Ford plans to spend roughly $30 million to $50 million to support “Go Further” —its global branding platform. Jim Farley, Ford’s global CMO, is aiming this campaign to move their two signature products this year, the 2013 Fusion and the 2013 Escape. Not an easy task for the Fusion as it fights in one of the most competitive automobile markets there is, the mid-size sedan market, competing among the likes of the Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, Chevy Malibu, Nissan Altima and Hyundai Sonata, just to name a few.

Ford has developed several aggressive and innovative marketing programs for this year’s Fusion and Escape including a branded entertainment web series, “Escape My Life,” and a primetime reality show, “Escape Routes.” Using real people and actual Ford employees for this campaign is clearly working here; the number of non-Ford owners who are jumping ship to be part of the EcoBoost engine family would make any automotive brand envious—and why not jump to the blue side? Who doesn’t want the power of a 6-cylinder with the gas mileage of a four?

As Scott Kelly, Ford’s communication manager said, “It’s about being as authentic as possible.” That theme continues throughout Ford’s innovative process and hasn’t stopped with their successful Active Park Assist Technology commercials either. These ads have paved the way for their more recent technology blitz, the Foot-activated Liftgate, prominently featured on the Emmy Award winning show “The Amazing Race” —a Ford sponsored reality show where many of their other passenger car and truck models have also been featured.

Accelerating the pace of innovation in marketing and innovation in automotive technology doesn’t always grow fruitfully at the same pace. Technology can build you, but it can also break you, especially in the automotive industry where reliability needs to be high and frustration needs to be low. Case in point, Ford’s SYNC® infotainment system is still not without its headaches and user frustrations, and everyone knows it, including Ford. BMW was slow to learn what the customer will tolerate when they first developed the much criticized iDrive back in 2001. Ford can’t afford the same mistake.

Alex Leopold is Interbrand's Brand Presentation Manager.

Hasbro announced plans to update its beloved, 77-year old board game, Monopoly. Literally changing the game piece by piece, Hasbro will replace just one of its iconic, pewter game tokens before the end of this year. The familiar wheelbarrow, shoe, dog, racecar, top hat, iron, thimble, and battleship are each at risk of “going to jail,” to be replaced by a robot, diamond ring, helicopter, cat or guitar.

This change may seem trivial to many, yet some diehard fans of the game are up in arms, arguing against any change at all. Of course, Hasbro must have expected —perhaps hoped for—exactly such a reaction.

Other iconic brands like Gap and Tropicana have learned the hard way that refreshing a cherished cultural symbol is sure to spark debate, even when a corporation owns that symbol. Gap infamously redesigned their own logo in 2010, only to switch back a week later after consumers and the design community reacted vehemently. Tropicana saw sales plunge after a redesign to its packaging that did away with the popular straw-in-an-orange image.

While the Monopoly change involves neither a logo nor packaging, similar principles apply in terms of how to handle such a shift.

So far, Hasbro has done a lot right:

• Making a small change first. Hasbro could have changed more than one piece at a time, as they’ve done in the past (it was “game over” for the lantern, purse, and rocking horse in the early 1950s). By putting a toe in the water, they may be testing the possibility of future, more far-reaching changes.
• Involving the consumer. By using Facebook and Twitter (#tokenvote) to let fans vote on which pieces stay and which pieces go, Hasbro not only builds buzz around the change but also gives players a sense of ownership over the game and the new piece.
• Having a little fun with it. From the interactive voting experience on Facebook to playful descriptions of the new piece candidates — the cat was “once worshipped in many parts of the world; still worshipped on the internet”—Hasbro is reminding us that, after all, it’s just a game.

Still, some will surely frame this as little more than a PR stunt, a reaction that Hasbro might have mitigated by reminding consumers that the game pieces have already changed several times or by telling a richer story about why the piece must change, or what the tokens represent to begin with. Others will continue to denounce any change as sacrilegious.

If we accept this change as a legitimate effort to update the game (who owns a flatiron these days, anyway?), it could be a careful step in the right direction. The skillful management of the tension between preserving authenticity and ensuring continued relevance helps great brands stand apart.

Monopoly has a long, proud history. While this latest move is a bit of a roll of the dice, we applaud their execution and for now — in the spirit of the game — we’ll happily play along.

Rob Meyerson is a Director, Verbal Identity, for Interbrand San Francisco.