(Read article on the WallBlog)
Uber’s rebranding has met with a wave of derision from the business, marketing and technology worlds. The twitter community has lamented the loss the brand’s distinctive ‘U’ and the lack of obvious references to its core business of moving people from A to B. Above all, the micromanagement of the two-year process by Uber CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick – an engineer by trade – has commentators questioning his priorities. Unfavourable comparisons are made with the light-touch rebrands of Google and Facebook which kept colours and references that consumers are familiar with.
All legitimate criticisms. But let’s slow down for a minute and look at what Kalanick was trying to achieve and why, as this may offer insight into how businesses understand brands. After all, it’s unusual for a CEO to take direct ownership of a rebrand the way Kalanick did.
A brand is only useful to the business when it helps it meet its ambitions and objectives. Any rebrand or repositioning exercise aims to help the brand further grow into new markets, speak to new audiences, or build credibility in new areas of expertise. Accordingly, the essential question for Uber’s CEO was whether the new identity and story help it expand and extend. Does it support its growth plans?
Moving away from ‘everyone’s personal driver’, the new brand narrative is “technology that moves cities”. This gives a sense of purpose for the brand beyond transportation. Moving cities references transport, of course, but opens the door to different kinds of services made possible by the brand’s technology. Uber is seeking new pockets of growth that build on its core service. Timing is paramount, as technology today is evolving fast and followers are catching up. They have started to steal away market share, providing incremental improvements to Uber’s services. Uber’s only option to maintain its leadership is growth, vertically and horizontally.
The brand’s new ventures in the courier industry give us an idea of where the brand sees this growth. Uber is redefining the category it competes in, transcending the taxi service it currently rivals. So rather than moving people, it is now moving cities. This sets up the grounds for the brand to start competing with the likes of DHL and FedEx. UberEats, UberRush, UberCargo are all extensions of the brand that offer courier/delivery services through a similar digital platform. Fair enough so far.
On the visual side, Uber’s new logo and colour palette aim to warm up, and build loyalty for, a relatively serious and exclusive-looking brand. The country-specific colour palette tries to humanise the brand beyond technology. In the age of personalisation and amidst the rise of global citizens, reducing nations to a colour palette seems not only patronizing, but also unnecessary. Consistency in identity across geographies creates memorability – it is messaging and communication that achieve local relevance.
On the other hand, the jargon of bits and atoms is an implicit reference to the brand’s technological innovation, which is now more of a commodity and less of an innovation. The inspiration behind it is reminiscent of the 1990s, although there is an attempt to make it applicable in everyday life today. According to Kalanick, “The unique aspect of Uber is that we exist in the physical world. When you push a button on your phone, a car moves across the city and appears where you are. We exist in the place where bits and atoms come together. That is Uber.”
This poses another question: what is the promise of the brand to its customers? While the broader sense of purpose the brand has given itself works for internal and B2B audiences, the company’s promise to its millions of consumers is still missing. What is the benefit of Uber’s services to individuals and current customers? What will make them choose Uber over other similar services? Perhaps this will be articulated later on in the brand’s content and messaging.
While it’s still early to judge the success of Uber in its new ventures, it is certain that the new identity signals the brand’s intentions for evolution and growth. Whether it works in the real world of ‘atoms’ is much less certain.