Case Study: Brand transformation leads to martech consolidation at Criteria Corp

Criteria Corp is currently undergoing the process of consolidating three brands into one global business, following a few years of integration between the brands across APAC and the USA.

Digital Nation spoke to Criteria Corp’s VP of Global Marketing Kate Phillips, previously the CMO of one of its Australian businesses Revelian, to understand the lessons learned through this period of transformation, and the impact on how the company does business.

“We are right in the throes of enhancing the criteria brand globally. And in doing so also rebranding our two APAC businesses,” Phillips says.

“It's given us the opportunity to really look at what we want our positioning to be in the market, what we want our brand purpose to be in the market, what we want to be known for everywhere, globally.”

The transformation process has allowed the company to reflect on its technology and processes, and ultimately make decisions about what makes the most sense for the brand moving forward.

“One of the parts of this process has involved us bringing the APAC marketing team and our North American marketing teams together as one global marketing team.”

“A lot of global organisations try and do a one size fits all [approach] and launch products in all markets at the same time, and to me that’s fraught with danger and it’s a little bit disrespectful to your markets as well.”

You have to be prepared to walk away from processes that no longer serve the business, says Phillips.

Phillips outlines the consistent steps required to build the brand, and successfully release it to the market.

She believes that such a process is not outlined in a textbook but the rebrand of a brand strategy contains consistent steps.

“You define what you want your purpose to be, you define what you want your positioning to be, and you seek feedback from the market to test all of those messages out and bring all of that together and ensure you're on the right path.”

It is only after taking these steps and consulting customers and stakeholders throughout the process that elements can be aligned and that one can be confident in the success of such a task, she says.

Start Stop Continue

“Any of the business planning that we're adopting, at the moment, even at a tactical campaign level, we're taking a really strong stop-start-continue framework,” she says.

“[We] look at what worked for us pre-pandemic, does it still have legs? Can it be adapted? Or do we need to have the courage to walk away from it and try something new? I think that the environment that we find ourselves in gives you an opportunity to experiment.”

Phillips highlights the importance of simplicity in branding and defining the organisation's purpose, in order to align the key messages of the organisation.

“When you are consolidating things like we are, you go through a phase of unification, then you’ve got to move into the simplify phase. How in bringing those things together, can we create efficiencies? Can we simplify the way that we're communicating to the market? How can we ensure that everyone is clear on what we're trying to achieve, and we don't have disparate views of our intent?”

“One of the exciting things that I'm looking forward to once we have this process behind us is having one brand and some really clear messages that we can be singing from the rooftops,” she says.

Credit: This video was produced by Josh Lundberg, Matthew Ryan and Tejas Bhat