Now in their 183rd year, NZ Post is transforming its business to fit the rapidly changing attitudes and use of postal services. 2023 marks the second year of three in this massive brand overhaul, the largest the country has seen.
The country’s largest rebrand
NZ post has reıained heavily associated with envelopers, stamps, mailboxes and letterboxes, but following the rise in online shopping during the pandemic, the brand knew it had to change.
As its most important consumers have now shifted to being online retailers and their customers, NZ Post decided to shift its approach to focus on courier delivery.
But in order to meet this focus, NZ Post needed to increase prices by six percent for three years consecutively to meet its EBIT margin and that left a bad taste with key consumers.
To combat this, the marketing team believed they needed to work on strong brand salience and great customer service to unlock that growth and brand alignment without creating a disconnect.
Creating a more unified brand, NZ Post needed to look at its current brand perceptions and was able to uncover that customers had an underlying level of anxiety surrounding mishaps of parcel delivery’s.
NZ Post also realised it was competing with competitors, and for consumers they could not differentiate between them all, meaning the brand would be receiving negative experiences that was mistaken for a different courier.
The brand wanted to create a brand that customers felt confident about, which led a “human-first” positioning closely working on reliability, visibility, simplicity and care while also standing out from a sea of multiple couriers.
Ultimately this led to NZ Post making the decision to undertake a brand overhaul, transforming its visual identity, brand messaging, communication and customer experiences. This also meant that internally the brand needed a values reset.
This was a challenging task for the brand that had more than 7,000 employees and contractors and is also a state-owned enterprise that had government figures, journalists and tax-payers as stakeholders.
NZ Post is also a complex ‘physical’ brand, where it has thousands of touchpoints across the country, so the sheer scale of change for the brand was “daunting”.
As 2022/2023 marked the second year of this transformation, the team needed to keep the momentum of change going, and it has been so far successful. The company’s 4,500 delivery people were provided with a new uniform and over 1,000 vehicles and 500 retail sites have a new visual identity to match their new brand.
NZ Post was able to achieve its brand objectives such as creating a strong brand salience within their consumers and stakeholders whilst also standing out from their competitors.
NZ Post wanted to grow its prominence with 60 percent of Kiwis knowing the brand by year two of the rebrand, and this was achieved this by getting 70 percent.
They have also grown positive brand associations with reliability going up by six points and brand preferences for consumers going up by eight points and businesses by three points.
Category:
Excellence in Brand Transformation Strategy
Company:
NZ Post
Marketing Initiative:
Year Two of NZ Post’s Brand Transformation Delivers More!
Marketing Partners:
FCB, Inhouse Design, TRA, David Thomason
Judges’ comments:
“A compelling case for transformation for an iconic Kiwi heritage business, in a highly complex operating environment. Delivered through simplifying a complex brand architecture to consistent, unified brand with distinctive assets delivered seamlessly tied to clear commercial objectives. FANTASTIC JOB!“
Finalists:
Comfortech Building Performance Solutions, Contact Energy, Foodstuffs New Zealand, J.H. Whittaker & Sons, Kiwibank, Lion New Zealand, MTF Finance, Oceania, One New Zealand, RealNZ, Westland Milk Products
This article was originally published in the September/October 2023 issue of NZ Marketing. Click here to subscribe.
