Mahesh V and Rajiv Rao, Group Creative Directors at O&M, Bangalore are the long-standing creative partners – best known for their work on cellular service brand Orange and Hutch. They came together at Heartbeat in 1994, moved to Ambience in 1996, and finally came to O&M in November 1999. They have a number of International Awards to their credit.

In this month’s issue of Collage, the duo has put down their views on Branding and why the Brand Image needs to change every now and then.

In today’s fast moving world if we don’t keep up with the present, we perish. So people are constantly changing their appearances. We add colour highlights to our hair one year and get a tattoo the next. We grow pony tails one year and shave our heads the next. We wear baggy trousers one season and cargos the next.

It works the same way with brands also. Brands need to constantly reinvent themselves. Because brands always need to connect with people. And people are ever changing. Unless you’re a brand that stands for old-fashioned values. Like Dalda. In such cases changing the brand image into something new and contemporary could be fatal. But in most other cases you need to constantly keep up with the times.

The advertising, and therefore the image, of brands like Levis keeps evolving and changing generation after generation, year after year. That’s why Levis has remained a cult brand for 150 years.

Adidas changed its logo and advertising and suddenly it became a serious contender to Nike. Even in award festivals.

The brand Altoids lives with old-fashioned packaging but, (pun unintended) refreshes its image constantly with its humourous advertising.

Honda used to be a boring, stolid Japanese car brand. Then a few years ago, with slick, award-winning commercials like ‘Cog’ and ‘Grr’ it changed that image forever. Suddenly Honda had become a serious car company that was making cars you actually wanted to own. HP, was a boring computer and printers company, until Goodby and Silverstein made them a new-age computer brand with a series of cutting-edge commercials. No one took Smirnoff seriously until Tarsem suddenly made it cool with his ‘a different world seen through the bottle’ ads. In our own country, dull, old-fashioned SBI is trying reinvent itself as a modern 21st century bank. The list is endless.

This change or evolution must never be expressed only externally. It should not just be lip service.

Madonna is the best example of someone who keeps reinventing herself. She is in tune with trends that are about to happen two years from now. Her clothes, hairstyle and most importantly, music constantly keep evolving. And that’s the secret of her staying power. In the other extreme is Michael Jackson, probably the worst example of change. In the last two decades he has changed his hairstyle, nose and even skin colour. And because he’s changed only externally, he is nowhere today.

The best formula for a brand to succeed is change, evolve, keep up with your audience and the times and connect with people. As the Ogilvy annual report puts it, “Evolve or perish’.