Woolworths? Safeway? The longest rebrand in history?
Bella Katz on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
A few weeks ago I was invited to do a presentation to a group of senior executives on Marketing Best Practice. I was ridiculously excited about it because for the last six months I’ve been a a bit obsessed with this very topic (in fact I used the word ‘obsessed’ in my last post too.) I decided to do a quick review of The Good and The Bad of Australian brands right now and one of The Bad I included was the Woolworths / Safeway rebranding.
My big issue with this is just how long it’s taking to change the Safeway name to Woolworths. It has been a good four to five months that I’ve been seeing the Safeway logo with the Woolworths strapline, the Woolworths name in the Safeway typeface with the Safeway logo, the Woolworths logo with the new Woolworths branding. I’ve seen them all at the same time, in the same store, in different stores, on the staff uniforms. I’ve heard the Woolworths jingle on the Safeway tv ad. I’ve seen the Woolworths trucks, the Safeway trucks. I’ve seen my local Safeway staff celebrating Everyday Rewards with the entire store turning orange in recognition of that branding. That happened overnight - no confusion there - they had caps, balloons, signage, uniforms, flyers, loyalty cards, a website.
I’m not entirely sure from Woolworths point of view what the issue is now. It can’t be budget, as surely a company of this size has the budget to implement a new brand very quickly across all areas of the business. It can’t be the awareness issue regarding Safeway being the more prominent brand in Victoria, not any more as we’ve been seeing Woolworths all over Safeway for months. I can only put it down to two things and neither of them are very satisfactory. Either Woolworths’ brand team have been too busy with the launch of Everyday Rewards to focus on retiring the Safeway name. Or they think customers will be too confused if Safeway disappeared entirely and Woolworths took over. Customers are already confused - put us out of our misery!
Tags: rebrand, safeway, woolworths
July 22nd, 2009 at 10:41 am
A great point you highlight here Bella! Seriously, I was only thinking this the other day. Coming from the UK I wasn’t familiar that woolworths and Safeway were the same company! To me it didn’t make sense that they had Woolworths branded spaghetti in a safeway store. It’s really confusing. I thought that Woolworths was a Queensland company and Safeway were it’s competitors in Victoria. I know that sounds stupid, and know now this is not the case as any given Australian knows this too, yet my point matches yours. Stop confusing us all and stick with the one brand..it’s not a pick and mix Safeway, I meant Woolworths!!!!
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:13 am
Not only is woolworths a name they are holding onto, what about vons? What is wrong with safeway its a known name with good safe connotation. Why the need for all the extra names?
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Thanks for the comments Sam and Caitlin. I saw another Safeway/Woolworths ad again last night where they’re advertising Safeway Liquor and then have both that and Liquor Woolworths logos at the end. Yawn ~ are they going to take another six months phasing that one out too?
August 8th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Bella I couldn’t agree more. As a marketer I too, have been really confused with the logic (or maybe lack of logic) with this rebranding. I just see it as a waste of money and more money will need to be spent to undo all the damage. I work a lot with small businesses and I will be using the Woolworths/Safeway rebranding as what not to do!