Richard FoutsWhy you ask? Well, for starters CA is changing its name to CA Technologies. For those of you that were under a rock last decade, CA’s chairman was given a 12 year prison sentence after giving the green light to overstate the firm’s revenue by $500 million (to pump up the stock price).
The firm survived the turmoil – and is ready to put the past behind and move on. No, wait…. Its new tag line, Believe Again (the operative word being “again”) conjures up images of the past. By saying we should believe ‘again’ CA urges us to re-consider investing in them – back ‘before’ all the problems started. I believe it’s the wrong tag line at the wrong time.
But there’s another issue. Brands should be timeless. Otherwise, you end up spending fortunes on re-identification campaigns. For example, no matter where Nike goes with its product line, “Just do it” as an athletic battle cry will never be irrelevant. No matter which direction Accenture heads it consulting practice, “business performance delivered” will always be relevant. In the 1970s the Gartner brand was “helping you make better, more informed technology decisions.” Today, the IT industry doesn’t even remotely resemble its former self. But our brand is still relevant.
With CA however, Believe Again will run out of steam at some point. In fact, CA wants it to become irrelevant as soon as possible. They want us to just Believe. Of course, measuring market belief won’t be easy. When CA executives believe “belief in them” has hit an acceptable level, they’ll be back to the drawing board, with a new brand campaign, “thanks for believing in us again, now stay with us as we <<insert new tag line.>> And the coffers at their agency of record will ring all the way to the bank.
Stay tuned for Gartner research that will support your brand initiatives. Analyst and Gartner Fellow, Jennifer Beck, will head it up. She has created a strong going-in position, that good branding results in a promise the company can deliver against for all time. Stay tuned for some good insight.
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1 response so far ↓
1 Henry Reardon June 2, 2010 at 8:35 pm
What they don’t tell is you that they $200 million is still down from where the marketing budget was 5 years ago and significantly less then their competitors percentage wise.
Changing the name from Computer Associates to CA to CA Technologies has been an exercise in how not to build a brand or on the positive side, how to make sure you spend every last penny of that marketing budget.
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