If it’s a bird and a plane, it may be a Super Brand

Posted by Steve Merino on 22 May 2009 | 2 Comments

Tags: Branding, Interactive, rebrand

The launch of BioClinica.

The entire pharmaceutical community has been abuzz with the recent announcements of two of the largest mergers in the history of the industry.

Pfizer is buying Wyeth. Roche is moving to purchase the rest of Genentech. And from a branding perspective, the rest of us are left to wonder: What happens next?

In these two particular cases, the most likely answer is: not much. Both Pfizer and Roche are well-established, multi-billion dollar companies. And while the competitors that they are acquiring manufacture different drugs, they provide similar services. (ie: It’s not Philip Morris buying Nabisco.) They’ll likely consume the other brand, and all the positive and negative perceptions of Wyeth and Genentech will now become part of the “new” Pfizer and Roche brands.

But what happens when you are merging two companies that offer two unique sets of capabilities? (ie: See Philip Morris and Nabisco.) In many cases, the best answer is to create an entirely new entity.

Introducing the “super brand.”

From an awareness, logistics and cost perspective, it’s usually counterproductive to aggressively promote two distinct brands. Additionally, in many cases combining the two companies creates a new type of offering or service.

Take, for example, last year’s merger of Bio-Imaging Technologies and Phoenix Data Systems. Both companies were well established in the clinical trials space, both with excellent reputations. But unlike Pfizer and Roche, their offerings were quite distinctive. Bio-Imaging was one of the industry’s leading Imaging Core Labs (ICL), whereas Phoenix offered Electronic Data Capture (EDC) solutions.

With a singular super brand, they could more accurately reflect their combined offerings and create what President and CEO Mark Weinstein called, “a unified voice or presence in the marketplace.”

Hence, the new BioClinica brand was born.

As a unified company, BioClinica offers improved levels of efficiency, better quality control and a much broader set of services to their clients. Similarly, as a brand, the new name tells a story, taking the “Bio” from Bio-Imaging and the “Clinica” aspect of Phoenix’s data management solutions.

With a new name, tagline, logo, website and overall brand identity launched just last month, BioClinica feels less like a merger of two different companies, and more of what Weinstein calls, “a strengthening transformation which will build on our previous experience across the pharmaceutical and medical device research arena.”

And from a branding perspective, that’s just super.

Reasons to Consider a Rebrand:

• The current name doesn’t accurately reflect your current offerings
• There are geographic, demographic or cultural limitations in your name
• You have negative perceptions that outweigh your current brand’s equity
• Your name is either too long, unclear or too hard to pronounce

James Altucher from thestreet.com sees good things in BioClinica’s future. Save his life and watch this clip.