Helloworld CMO: Creating a brand from scratch is like an iceberg
Earlier this year a group of well-known high street travel agents rebranded under the Helloworld banner. Steve Jones sat down with marketing boss Kim Portrate to discuss the challenges of rebranding a legacy business, why creating a brand from scratch is like an iceberg, and how the job is never done.
It’s no secret that high street travel agents are under pressure from their low-cost online counterparts. Add that to the fact the sector has been dominated by retail giant Flight Centre and you start to get the scale of the challenge facing the new Helloworld brand.
Marketing has been underway for several months in a bid to force Helloworld into the public conscience, with CMO Kim Portrate insisting she was “comfortable” with its progress.
The launch of Helloworld just over 12 months ago followed a protracted internal review at what was then called Jetset Travelworld, a troubled ASX-listed company which consisted of four retail travel brands; Jetset, Travelworld, Travelscene American Express and Harvey World Travel.
While they unmistakably gained some efficiency from 4 brands to one, this always appeared to be an exercise in window dressing Vs a proper rebrand
Its a nice logo and look, don’t get me wrong, but retail travel in 2013/14/15 and beyond seems to need much more than that to survive, particularly against a market leader like FC
There seems to be no product development or innovation layer, no commitment to doing things different and make all of us who book direct come back to a travel agency by offering services or extras that prove their value
Cover the logo and the website is same same
The stores look more contemporary, but that’s as deep as it seems to be, same walls of brochures, advertised deals etc.
Innovative social or content driven marketing? – don’t see anything but same same
300 out of 1100 fully branded stores with a mish mash of compromises underneath? How could this have been allowed to happen?
I am keen to see them turn it around but its been a shaky start IMO
Given this “The launch of Helloworld just over 12 months ago” and the fact i’d never heard of them its no suprise this “Portrate declined to reveal awareness data for Helloworld, claiming it was “not appropriate” to share such information.”
Add in this “So far 300 shops have taken the full Helloworld identity, 400 have become dual branded while 300 have become affiliate members of the network. One hundred remain with their previous networks.” and things don’t look great.
How do you have a master brand when there’s sub-brands?
I suspect the only thing hello world has in common with icebergs is something it will share with the Titanic, a sinking.
I agree with you @Mack
What I find interesting is that their customers “wanted contemporary, they wanted modern” – yet they still want old-fashioned face-to-face service rather than book online??
If I was in charge, I would have avoided the ‘candy store’ fit-out and gone with something really warm and homely, big coffee table-style travel books, offered free coffees for customers, made it a real experience. Who wants to sit in row seating under fluorescent lighting?
Likewise, their website looks no different to any of the other big travel sites. Where’s the unque difference?
I reckon Kim Portrate’s got a tough gig!
Experts in everywhere sounds like an internal slogan rather than a motivating and differentiated consumer value proposition