From the field: how to successfully manage a brand change

Basler becomes Baloise!

Don't touch the logo! Unless companies merge or, as in our case:
The Baloise Group has a new name. In the course of this one-brand strategy, the entire Group is given the new name, Baloise, including a new logo and a completely new corporate identity across all countries and companies. With over 550 independent distribution partners, such wholesale changes can be a nightmare to manage - but it wasn't! Read below why the changeover went so well and what socoto had to do with it.

The announcement and implementation of a new brand name and a realigned brand identity can cost a lot of time and resources (not to mention nerves!). But it doesn't have to! Not even if you work with many independent sales partners. Because the most important thing - apart from good time planning - is a system that automates as much as possible and provides sales partners with the latest advertising material right down to the second.

Basler becomes Baloise! The deadline was the 5th of October 2022. Baloise redefined the CI throughout the group and determined the individual means of communication that the almost 400 independent agencies and more than 550 sales partners in Germany use for their local advertising. The spectrum ranges from banners for local sponsoring at the sports field to car lettering and 18/1 outdoor advertising, not to mention the complete business equipment of the individual agencies. A huge logistical effort to handle all this.

"Carrying out the re-branding was a huge challenge for all of us," says Manuela Baum, Marketing Communications at Baloise Germany. With professional support from our partners - from creative agencies, printers and advertising media providers to outdoor advertising at the point of sale - we were able to get all employees and sales partners on board very well and everyone pulled together. Thus we succeeded well and above all in the planned timing that Basler became Baloise! Our marketing portal from socoto plays an important role in this."

For Baloise, it was particularly important that all advertising material was made available to the agencies on time or with a certain lead time, so that there was no advertising break and only advertising material that corresponded to the current CI was actually played out. And this is exactly what Baloise controlled via socoto's marketing portal. socoto’s tools allow you to define which assets are valid and retrievable up to specific dates - by the way, this does not only apply to a CI change, but can always be used to give entire campaigns a certain validity.

And socoto's marketing portal offers even more for CI changes: Timings, measures, costs and responsibilities for each individual sales partner can be made via the Marketing Planning module. This allows you to see at a glance when and where the conversion will take place. If desired, this can also be linked to regional or nationwide campaigns to ensure orchestrated communication and strengthen the new brand identity. Coordinated in this way, a CI change not only loses its fright, but can in the best case help the company to strengthen its image and to grow even further.

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