As those who currently earn a paycheck at Eir can tell you, rebranding is a strange business. While the name over the door changes, the day-to-day gig remains the same.
Eir is a company with a history of name changes. There may well be workers at the company who have a drawer containing branded biros, polo shirts and mugs from its previous incarnations as the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, Telecom Éireann and Eircom. Yet Eir is doing just what it always did and selling stuff based around telecom lines.
Radio is another sector fond of rebrands. The station currently trading as Today FM was initially called Radio Ireland before the station’s owners realised no one was biting on its mix of spoken word and music and changed course a year in. These days, music rather than news is the station’s main calling card, so that repositioning worked.
Stations in the competitive Dublin market have also had their fair share of identity crises, including Dublin Q102 (formerly Lite FM), FM104 (nee Capital Radio and Rock 104), Sunshine (ex-Dublin’s Country and Country Mix) and TXFM (the station once better known as Phantom FM).
In some cases, the rebranding proved to be as pointless as the original pitch and more shareholders’ cash went down the swanee.
Across the Irish Sea, Radio X is currently trying to make new male friends. Formerly known as XFM, the indie music station's rebranding has introduced a new name and added seasoned voices to its roster in the shape of Chris Moyles (ex-BBC Radio One), Vernon Kay (also formerly of the Beeb), Johnny Vaughan and Ricky Wilson (dude from The Kaiser Chiefs and the BBC's The Voice TV show).
The fact that all the new DJs are blokes has turned out to be great for publicity, with reviewers lining up to give the station a dig in the mush for its sexism. However, the fact that the new station’s playlist consists of stodgy, uninteresting and bland indie rock (something I know from sad experience having listened to the station last week) is probably just as much of a reason to give the station a kicking.
But there is probably some marketing exec who can fire up a Powerpoint presentation and give you a whole deck of reasons for the rebranding, male voices and awful music. The belief is that a station with geezers playing rock and guitar-based music will pull in 25- to 44-year-old males, and advertisers will follow this audience in droves.
That a station which once provided real fresh programming on the airwaves is now in the business of hawking the worst kind of music known to man (or woman) is depressing. But rebranding is about pulling in new customers and increased revenue. If Radio X gains a bigger audience and more advertisers than XFM, it will be high-fives and pints all round.
A very sad state of affairs.
