When a company is going through a rebranding process, it is important to constantly clarify the answer to the question "Who is this for?"

The past few weeks I was in Norway with my in-laws and privileged to spend a lot of time discussing brands with my father-in-law, who has his PhD in Branding from the University of London and is a brand strategy consultant to the largest retail group in Norway.

While I was there, we discussed the recent rebrand of the Norwegian company, Statoil.

Statoil is an oil company with over 500 filling stations in Norway with more scattered all over Scandinavia.  Here is an image of one of their filling stations.

The company recently merged with Norsk Hydro and here is an image of the identity after its rebrand.

Though I don't have the privilege of  knowing all of the internal reasons behind why the company did this, it begs the question: Who is this for? Consumers are very familiar and comfortable with the filling station identity, but the executives wanted to change it to better display the merger.

So again, who is this for?  The Executives or the Target Audience.

The answer is always the Target Audience. All too often rebrands are done at the pleasure of the leadership rather than a strategic decision with the customer in mind.  Not that a CEO should be ignored in the process, but most often the CEO is no where close to the Target Audience.

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