Monday, November 05, 2007

Rebranding a Security Vendor

Rebranding by itself is a tricky process, which if not coordinated at all levels of the enterprise could result in severe channel conflicts damaging the brand's image, and increasing the risk of confused positioning.

PandaSoftware's recent rebranding to PandaSecurity comes as a smoothly executed example of the process, as it needed to take advantange of the entire marketing toolset in order to communicate their new vision, mostly a sound repositioning strategy emphasizing that the company's core competency is not software in general, but IT security. As in every other marketing campaign aiming to achieve such effect, the business lingo used affects the prospective audience of the campaign, be it the U.S or the EMEA markets or even better in respect to globalization - try to influence both with a clear vision, namely that "Prevention is better than the cure". The question from a marketing perspective always remains - is it a brand with a mission, or is it a mission with a brand, and isn't the second a better socially oriented positioning than the standard practice?

Meanwhile, here's another proof that building a solid brand results in sustained brand equity, thereby attracting potential acquirers' interest which is the case with McAfee's recent acquisition of ScanAlert for $51M. What they're buying is not the technology behind the company, a daily managed penetration testing process, but ScanAlert's brand and clients list.

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