Rise Mahindra Rise – Brand Makeover and Positioning

Re-branding Mahindra with a New tag-line
 
Around 13 years ago, Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) defined its core purpose inspired by Akio Morita, founder of Sony Corporation. Its tag-line read – “Indians are second to none in the world.” While Sony Corporation represented Japan as the best in the world with its world-class products, M&M wanted to do the same with its products for India.

With this core purpose and global ambitions, M&M grew rapidly to a $7.1-billion automobiles-to-IT conglomerate since its founding in 1945. With businesses expanding to newer geographies (Mahindra Group has a presence in 79 countries around the world), 10 per cent of M&M’s workforce comprised of non-Indian employees. The tag-line no longer suited a global multinational company with customers all around the world. Mahindra chose to reposition itself based on employee, consumer and customer feedback and hired StrawberryFrog, a New York-based global advertising agency.

New branding called Rise

M&M had never communicated through a single brand umbrella across its segments such as aerospace, automotive, farm equipment, IT and logistics. The need for one brand voice spanning geographies was evident in capturing global markets. After a nine month search the company chose ‘Rise’ which the group’s vice chairman and managing director Anand Mahindra believes is not a word but a rallying cry that will give an opportunity to become tomorrow’s company. The word ‘Rise’ was chosen after customers around the world expressed a common desire to rise and to succeed.

Spirit of ‘Rise’ – Three Brand Pillars

Rise is based on three brand pillars –

1. Accepting no limits
2. Alternative thinking
3. Driving positive change

By incorporating Rise into its performance management systems, M&M wants to allow its employees to perform better and succeed. The company plans to spend about Rs 120 crore over three years to promote its new brand positioning.