Information Resources Inc. (IRI) and The NPD Group (NPD) were industry leaders in their respective fields; IRI providing data, analytics and advisory services to the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry and NPD offering similar services to automotive, consumer technology, general merchandise and several other industry sectors.
The two companies announced their merger on April 12, 2022, and its completion on August 1, 2022. Despite the 45 years of brand equity built by IRI and over 50 years for NPD, management felt strongly that retaining one or both of the existing brands was not an option. They embarked on the bold strategy of creating an entirely new, innovative brand with a completely fresh identity that focused on the future rather than reviving the past.
Attivo Networks turns the table on hackers by deceiving them into believing they are attacking actual data assets, when in fact they are targeting decoys. Attack analysis, forensics, and third-party integrations accelerate incident response.
A paradigm shift has occurred in information security, with the narrative shifting from if a breach will happen to when it will happen. The use of additional defense solutions can be used to validate the effectiveness of security defenses and accelerate the identification of BOTs and advanced persistent threats (APTs) inside a network.
Typically, security networks and data centers employ a perimeter defense with the goal of preventing any and all hackers from getting in. However, that is a fruitless endeavor with the sheer number and increasing sophistication of breaches reported every year.
As a result of the level of cybercrime today, the addition of post infection detection is a necessary component to any security strategy, helping uncover attackers whose breaches can go unnoticed for seven to eight months. Breach detection systems that focus on post infection detection complement existing firewalls, secure Web gateways and other solutions by looking for attackers already in the network.
The use of active deception is a highly effective technique to deal with these cyberattacks, which lures hackers that manage to get through traditional security infrastructures by using a trap. This very efficient and cost-effective addition of a new layer of security complements existing infrastructure by accelerating breach discovery and providing a new line of defense, making it difficult for attackers to reach or compromise valuable assets.
When UPRAISE started work with Attivo, deception was a little known or understood category within cybersecurity. As a result, it was very hard to generate interest from media, analysts, conference managers and other key influencers.
Articles covering the rebranding
%
Share of voice versus competitors
%
Rebranding awards won
What’s in a Name? A Lot It Turns Out
Kicking off the monumental challenge of creating a new name, Circana looked at a wide range of brand types, such as those that describe an attribute or accolade, such as Progressive; names that are “clarifying combos,” such as YouTube; others that were “signifying objects,” such as Target.
The IRI/NPD team engaged with the leading brand consulting firm Landor. The project began with a brand equity study in 30 countries across North America, EMEA and APAC to understand the perception of its legacy companies among clients and the broader market. That study was followed by extensive research, including a comprehensive survey of over 750 IRI and NPD clients and prospects, more than 40 in-depth, one-on-one interviews with clients, industry, and media analysts, and live, online listening sessions involving over 570 employees from both organizations across the globe.
With the results of this research in hand, Landor generated approximately 2,700 potential new brand names, 200 logo concepts, and 1,100 taglines. Additionally, they conducted two linguistic studies spanning 22 languages and markets that served as a key step in making the final decision.
Strengthening the New Brand with a Tagline and Logo
Circana, with the accompanying “Complexity into Clarity” tagline, was the best option to communicate a new direction. Since the root name of “Circana” is a circle, it reflects Circana’s value proposition of bringing a complete 360-degree view of the consumer to the industries it serves. The two “Cs” in Circana tie directly to the tagline “Complexity into Clarity” and its differentiator of enabling clients to “see the complete consumer.”
The logomark is six concentric circles representing the complexity of consumer data and the complexity of clients’ markets. The bold, modern wordmark appears to emerge from the symbol, reflecting how Circana is reinventing its business category and differentiating itself from competitors. Completing the logo is the clarity dot, a symbol of the ultimate clarity that Circana achieves as a result of embracing complexity.
The visual approach carried through to colors, photography and design elements. With an abundance of greens and blues among competitors in the industry, Circana uses bold colors like black and purple with warm accent hues such as magenta to set its visual identity apart. This color palette communicates a tech-forward vision while still generating a grounded and human feeling. Circana’s photography features bold, vibrant moments in time to use in contrast with colorful abstract images to show the journey of complex, abstract data to a real-life, clear moment. Reports, presentations, and social media graphics use bold, warm colors paired with vibrant images and circles to create dynamic layouts. The font choices, Poppins and Roboto Condensed, were selected for a sleek, technological, and circular look while still compliant with accessibility needs.
The new brand identity was implemented across touchpoints internally and externally, including vibrant building signage, business cards, and all other marketing collateral. Circana shared an exciting brand launch video to its website and social channels on launch day. The video, which has garnered over 650,000 views on YouTube alone, honed in on Circana’s unique offering of the “Complete Consumer” view — bringing clarity to a world that is complex for its clients to navigate.
The press release announcing Circana earned 57 feature articles and 8.7 million unique views in two weeks, unheard of for a rebranding announcement of a private company.
Circana advertised its new brand by taking over Ad Age’s homepage for a day. Since Circana is headquartered in Chicago, two ad placements were featured on Chicago Tribune’s leaderboard and sidebar web pages for four days.
Promoting a Winning Project
Rebrandings are often a big yawn with media, conference managers and award competitions. The UPRAISE team had to clearly differentiate this project from the many other rebrandings announced on a continuous basis.
We focused on a few unique elements as part of our overall strategy:
- Unlike many rebrandings, which are driven by negative events, such as bankruptcies or product recalls, Circana initiated this rebrand from a position of strength: unparalleled brand equity in the IRI and NPD names, built up over 40 and 50 years, respectively.
- We concentrated on the vision of creating a powerful new value proposition that called for a new brand that reflected creating a category of one.
- We created tension around the new branding by building into messaging that just two weeks after announcing the rebrand, Circana would host its flagship multi-million dollar annual event, Growth Summit, where Circana would gather 1,200 clients and partners in Las Vegas for three days.
- Despite the challenges of planning Growth Summit, including its first occurrence since 2019 due to the pandemic, it emerged as an overwhelming achievement. Prior to the event, 44% of attendees had an extremely positive opinion of the brand and a post-event survey revealed an astounding 81% of attendees held an extremely positive opinion.
Although Circana’s heritage companies built their brand individually in the marketplace, Circana continues to build its own reputation through multifaceted public relations focusing on consistent brand messaging across all marketing channels and touchpoints. Circana thought leaders contribute their insights through speaking engagements, interviews and bylines. Circana’s Global CMO discussed the rebranding journey with media such as Adweek and Forbes.
Circana won a gold Hermes Creative Award for Corporate Branding, two gold MUSE Creative Awards for Corporate Identity Redesign and Logo. They also received a platinum MarCom Award for Branding Refresh, silver from Transform Magazine North America Awards for Best Corporate Rebrand Following a Merger or Acquisition, as well as bronze for Brand Identity and Award of Excellence for Logos from Best Brand Awards. Circana was also commended for Brand Redesign by the World Brand Design Awards and received an honorable mention for Brand Redesign by Chief Marketer’s PRO Awards.
Circana expanded its social media platforms to highlight new capabilities and innovations. Circana also regularly shares data with Tier 1 and trade publications to establish the organization as a trusted resource within the marketplace.
Considering the decades of brand reputation IRI and NPD established, the rebranding campaign was risky. However, the campaign successfully positioned Circana as a powerful company of combined strengths, giving clients true clarity on all factors impacting their business and enabling clients to outperform competitors by using data to ignite innovation and spark fresh thinking. Circana will continue to evolve as it has finally shed its identities as IRI and NPD and come together as one.
“UPRAISE is my go-to resources for so many marketing-related projects, and they always come through for me. They are an integral part of my team and I value working with them highly.”
Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Circana
