RE-BRANDING: ALL IT NEEDS IS A LIL' ICOMO-DIFICATION!

A good rebranding campaign is more than just revamping a logo.

With so much implosion going on in the digital spectrum, and brands trying to constantly reinvent their image, their communication agencies have the exciting task of losing their sanity to create edgy stuff and yet keep their sanity, so that they never lose the essence of what made the brand in the first place.

When Faasos decided to widen their offering from wraps and biryanis only, to anything palatable under the sun (and post sunset as well), ICOMO, its creative and digital agency, had their work cut out for them.

“A good rebranding campaign is more than just revamping a logo. The challenge for us was to widen the base and yet continue to appeal to the brand’s distinct TG (the die-hard young foodie with a cheeky sense of humour). You can’t just tickle one funny bone with Faasos. You have to tickle all 206!” says Jaichelle Barretto, Creative Copy & Film Supervisor, ICOMO.

Years back, ICOMO had identified Faasos’ ‘calling card food-type’ as wraps with the famous ‘Why eat wraps?’ generic campaign. And now suddenly, there was no ‘calling card food-type’ anymore, and yet there needed to be continuity. So ‘Why eat?’ in the first place...

Earlier this month, Faasos published ‘FAASOS ACCUSED OF GIVING ChaiPani ACROSS INDIA’ – an ad that creatively connects with us as Indians, yet clearly communicates the message ‘serving chai across India’. The quirky ad, to be taken with a pinch of salt, created buzz.

Now there’s Belita – a home salon service provider that offers professional salon services at home, a brand also going through its rebranding process with ICOMO. Its founders are young and willing to take risks, and remind the ICOMO team a great deal of the Faasos of the early days.

Akshay Jain, Co-founder & CEO of Belita says, “Belita has the potential to grow into a multi-city service. We want to make a big presence especially online now. With so much competition in the market and so many me-toos mushrooming, it’s so important to mark your own identity. We’ve worked with ICOMO ever since we’ve started, what's good is that they cover the whole range ATL, BTL, social media and film - and this expertise and knowledge sharing between verticals really helps us. We also like their style of pushing boundaries and trying to find an edge in communication. Hopefully, you’ll see a lot more of us coming soon in the near future!”

Belita will soon be launching its rebranding campaign #MyWay – where along with showcasing the functional aspects of the brand, the campaign will talk about women in general and the stereotypes they are subjected to. Lines like ‘Don’t break the signal. Break the stereotype’ were seen on a bus back ad for Belita, which had women asking what this was all about.

All campaigns undertaken by ICOMO go through a rite of passage, the team calls “ICOMOFICATION” – a cathartic cleansing and improvisation process spearheaded by Managing Director Sandeep Varma himself - the man behind the much-acclaimed movie – Manjunath, that won the Ramnath Goenka Award for Cinematic Excellence earlier this year.

“We’ve never worked with very big media budgets so the idea is always maximum impact and excitement per rupee spent. I keep telling my creative team let the big guys go after the awards, let’s go for recall value, and memorability. And finally brand sales. Thankfully our brand owners appreciate that. I think that’s where we cut our distinction,” says Sandeep.

Viral. Exciting. Contemporary. Fun. Brands are constantly looking to be all this (and then some) when they rebrand. And ICOMO, which parallelly works with marquee brands such as Radio Mirchi, Axis Bank, British Council and so on, is always on the lookout to jump off the cliff and fly.