The fastest ever image wrapper change in history

This post a team effort between me and our first ever guest blogger, Calli Robertson. I met her at one of the WTS? Live talks I did a couple of weeks ago. Nice one Calli!

Interesting to see that Virgin have pulled out of the business where the brand was born: record stores. Virgin Megastores have been sold in a management buy-out. And this has prompted another example of what seems like "image-wrapper branding": change the logo, but not a lot else.

The new owners have trumpeted what they call "the fastest ever re-branding in (entertainment retail history)" to zavvi. The new MD, Simon Douglas, says that Zavvi will "…deliver a new brand that lives and breathes entertainment and delivers high quality enthusiastic service to existing and new customers."

But what has changed in this "re-brand". New product range? Nope. New service style? Nope. New store design? Nope (though to be fair, they do claim to be working on this). The result is the same old stores, but with a much less well-known and rather dodgy brand name. It would have been much better to work on innovation of the business, then announce the new name.

We guess they may have been forced to changing the name quickly by Virgin, as part of the deal. But then don’t over-sell the change as a re-branding. Just call it what it is: a new name.