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Geely inherited the old Jiangbei automaking operation and gave it the name Maple, effectively creating another Geely division. Years later the name Maple has yet to resonate with consumers, and its leaf logo may appear more Canadian to them than Chinese.
Early in its life Geely Auto used a logo that looked so much like Toyota's that the Japanese giant brought them to court. Turned out that the Chinese court decided in Geely's favor but Geely wisely abandoned its use.
After a few years of use Geely decided it would do better replacing the striped mountain peak logo, and so it launched a contest to create a new one at a cost of RMB 3.6 million (Xinhua 07-1-09) (circa US 0.5 million).
This month's news tells us that the company is now planning to phase out its existing Geely and Maple brands, replacing them with three new brands: Imperial, Eagle and Shanghai Yinglun.
Has Geely done any research in advance of this decision? If it did it would have found out that the name change from Datsun to Nissan cost the company more than half a million dollars, not a meager sum back in the nineteen eighties. And it's said that the changing of dealership signs alone amounted to US$30 million. The cost of the "brand confusion" that ensued is hard to determine, but must have been a big part of the total.
A similar costly setback was also encountered I'm sure by Honda, when it replaced the esteemed Legend brand name with the letters RL.
The bright new models shown at Beijing last spring was cause for a lot of confidence in Geely's future, and so now I wish it luck as it goes forward with this radical change in naming its products.
Early in its life Geely Auto used a logo that looked so much like Toyota's that the Japanese giant brought them to court. Turned out that the Chinese court decided in Geely's favor but Geely wisely abandoned its use.
After a few years of use Geely decided it would do better replacing the striped mountain peak logo, and so it launched a contest to create a new one at a cost of RMB 3.6 million (Xinhua 07-1-09) (circa US 0.5 million).
This month's news tells us that the company is now planning to phase out its existing Geely and Maple brands, replacing them with three new brands: Imperial, Eagle and Shanghai Yinglun.
Has Geely done any research in advance of this decision? If it did it would have found out that the name change from Datsun to Nissan cost the company more than half a million dollars, not a meager sum back in the nineteen eighties. And it's said that the changing of dealership signs alone amounted to US$30 million. The cost of the "brand confusion" that ensued is hard to determine, but must have been a big part of the total.
A similar costly setback was also encountered I'm sure by Honda, when it replaced the esteemed Legend brand name with the letters RL.
The bright new models shown at Beijing last spring was cause for a lot of confidence in Geely's future, and so now I wish it luck as it goes forward with this radical change in naming its products.
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