To Rebrand or Not to Rebrand, That is the Question

By Megan Quinn

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It’s funny how a new look can change the entire feel of a company. Sometimes a business wants a change – whether it is a flashy or subtle one. Starbucks made a slight change to their logo in 2011, but it’s barely noticeable (in my opinion). They opted to keep their signature mermaid symbol, while making some updates to it, and removing the words “Starbucks Coffee” from their logo. In short – their company name in the logo was unnecessary because their brand is internationally recognizable.

Sometimes logo changes are not enough. That was the case with Hotmail. Launched in 1996, this email service has been around for almost 20 years and was one of the first web-based email services. However, Microsoft decided to reinvent Hotmail during the summer of 2013 to become Outlook.com. Hotmail users still got to keep the “@hotmail.com” address, plus their contacts and passwords, but significant external changes took place.

“Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve completed upgrading all Hotmail customers to Outlook.com. Coupled with the growing organic excitement for Outlook.com, this has pushed us to over 400 million active Outlook.com accounts, including 125 million that are accessing email, calendar and contacts on a mobile device using Exchange ActiveSync,” Microsoft said in a blog post on the day it finished the upgrade. The Outlook.com integration process took only six weeks and was completed on May 2, 2013.

Not only did Microsoft’s Hotmail rebrand, but they also backed up their decision with plenty of ways to keep their customers happy and loyal while gaining new ones. Sounds like rebranding and updating was their key to success.

Not every company needs to rebrand. Sometimes it only requires a surface change. In this case, Microsoft’s Hotmail was due for a huge upgrade – and the company delivered.

Another lesser known success story is that of Burberry, the clothing, scarf and handbag brand. Their infamous checkered pattern actually was digging them into a deep hole. The pattern had become associated with hooligans in the UK who acted violently at soccer matches. A pattern that was once seen as a status symbol was now outlawed, so to speak.

Burberry was in serious need of a rebranding effort to keep their customers. They decided to hire young celebrities to endorse their products and also revamped their trench coats. By staying in the loop and realizing their brand was being connected with the wrong crowd, they kept their successful name.

Sometimes rebranding doesn’t fit in with the company's ultimate needs and goals, or maybe it’s just not necessary, if customers are so accustomed to the old logo. Business won’t exactly improve or could stay the same. There are currently some new brand logos out there that I’m not too fond of, but I still give those brands business because I like their products or services.

Are there any new rebranding efforts you feel made a critical difference for companies? Are there any branding schemes you wish had never changed? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Return to Sender 10 Months Later?

By Rose Strong

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Have you ever wished you could follow a letter from the time you sent it to the time it arrives in the mailbox of your intended recipient? It might be an interesting journey.

As a communications firm, Furia Rubel is ready quite early with our holiday cards and video greetings. We plan for them to go out in the mail about three weeks before the actual holiday.

Last year, our greetings were sent out on or about Dec. 9 from the Philadelphia postal hub. As happens with any mass mailing, some addressees are no longer at the address we have on file. We typically receive these cards back, investigate for the updated address, and resend. This process usually takes 10 to 14 days.

However, we recently received one of our 2013 holiday cards back, marked Return to Sender / Unable to Forward / Not Deliverable As Addressed - more than 250 days after it had been mailed.

Please indulge me as I give a quick and brief history lesson about the United States Postal Service. The organization began as the United States Post Office, a governmental agency first suggested by publisher William Goddard in 1774 as a way to get information out to citizens without the prying eyes of the British postal inspectors. The USPS began moving the mail on July 26, 1775, as approved by the Second Continental Congress. Benjamin Franklin was appointed its first postmaster general.

Upon the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, the U.S. Postal Service functioned as a regular, tax-supported, agency of the federal government. Still an agency of the federal government today, in 1982 U.S. postage stamps became “postal products,” and the USPS now is funded solely by sales of stamps, shipping and other services.

As of this writing, there are more than 30,000 post offices, stations and branches throughout the United States to handle domestic mail. If you take a gander at the USPS website’s ‘About’ page, you can see the numbers regarding mail volume, the people involved, fleet of vehicles and the department’s yearly budget.  Here are just a few of the numbers, based on 2013 data, that I found interesting:

• 152.9 million — total number of delivery points nationwide
• 158.4 billion — number of mail pieces processed
• 211,654 — number of vehicles — one of the largest civilian fleets in the world
• 1.2 billion — number of miles driven each year by mail carriers and truck drivers
• 38.8 million — number of address changes processed
• If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 45th in the 2013 Fortune 500.
• In the 2013 Global Fortune 500 list, the U.S. Postal Service ranked 140th.

From those fine facts, it can be concluded that the United States Postal Service is a colossal organization. So, one long lost letter in that sphere of people and mechanical processes shouldn’t be surprising.

I took our returned card to my local post office and asked the postmistress why it could have taken so long to come back to our office. She made a copy and said she’d pass it along to her regional office and see if they had an answer.

Checking in a few days later, the postmistress told me that there was no conclusive answer.

“It could have fallen off the belt in the sorting facility and gotten stuck, and someone found it when the machine jammed or they cleaned and just sent it along on its way,” she said.

Sometimes one doesn’t get answers to the mysteries they question. I guess that’s all there really is to Return to Sender - unless you’re an Elvis fan.

Diary of a Bull$hit Explainer

By Gina F. Rubel

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How often do you have to explain something to a client, family member, colleague or friend that you know is bullshit? Please forgive the language, but there really is no other term for it. It is what it is, as they say!

Today, I actually thought to add “bullshit explainer” to my bio. It disgusts me that there are so many marketing scams and schemes out there, run by people and companies who are just trolling for victims. In fact, Snopes.com has dedicated a whole section of its website to Marketing 101 urban legends.

As a result, I’ve decided to keep a diary this week of bullshit that we come across regularly, that otherwise would victimize the unsuspecting.

Those “fake” Yellow Page listings: Every few months, we receive a letter in the mail that says it’s time to renew our Yellow Page listings. If you get one of these, be suspicious.

The big dogs in Yellow Page advertising, both print and online, have thousands of well-trained sales representatives who call on their clients annually for renewal. Sales reps often are compensated based on new or increased sales and renewals, so they don’t simply rely on snail mail. If you get one of those letters, question it. Don’t just put it in your bookkeeper’s “to pay” file. That is exactly what bullshit companies are hoping you’ll do.

Google’s latest unsolicited analytics, “Your personalized Analytics report”: This week, we received an unsolicited email from “Google” which provided us with analytics for our blog, ThePRLawyer.com. The analytics were so nebulous that we couldn’t help but deduct that they are being distributed simply to increase ad word sales.

There is no time frame for the analytics. They use terms like “bounce rate” in bold as a scare tactic. In fact, when you read the fine print, “bounce rate” means “how many people leave your site without visiting any other pages on your site.” For a blog, that’s not necessarily bad. If you are driving traffic to a particular story that interests the reader and they read it and move on, you have accomplished your goal.

Here, bounce rate is not synonymous with the “bounce rate” of electronic newsletters. Couldn’t they come up with a better descriptive phrase? They came up with the name “Google,” didn’t they?

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Bogus online listing about to expire: Almost weekly, our clients get emails stating that their “listing is about to expire.” When you investigate further, there was never any listing to begin with.

The most recent notice received by one of our clients was from a low-quality website where our client had not been listed in the first place. Scamming companies such as these hope that people, such as our clients, will click on those listings which will, in turn, boost the flow of internet traffic to their website. If the visitor then creates an actual listing for her company on that website, the scammer has benefitted in two ways.

Feel free to add your bullshit marketing stories here, too. I’m sure there’s more where these came from.

Holiday Greetings from Furia Rubel Marketing & PR

We hope you enjoy the Furia Rubel Marketing & PR 2012 animated holiday card...

Wishing you a wealth of warmth and prosperity.

From the integrated marketing team at Furia Rubel Communications

Furia Rubel Ranked #1 in The Legal Intelligencer's "Best of" Survey – Second Consecutive Year

For the second consecutive year, Furia Rubel has been named a top marketing and public relations agency serving the legal industry by readers of The Legal Intelligencer. Furia Rubel ranked #1 in the publication’s “Best of 2012” survey, which asks readers to cast their votes for the best providers of products and services to Pennsylvania’s legal community.

To achieve the “gold” ranking in The Legal Intelligencer is a true honor and we owe our gratitude to our clients. On behalf of the staff at Furia Rubel, we deeply appreciate this tremendous vote of confidence. 



For more information, please read the press release.

Personal Branding – You Are What They Google

Laura Powers of the Simpsons(tm)

OK, I’ll admit it. I’ve got Google Alerts set up for my name. I also like to Google my name from time to time, just to see what comes up.

Think I’m weird? An ego-surfer? Maybe, but there is a reason why I monitor my name on Google. You see, I’m not just interested in how I see myself – I want to know how you see me.

In today’s hyper-connected world, you are what you can Google – or rather what others can Google about you. Increasingly those without an online presence are viewed as out-of-step at best and suspicious at worst. Consider these statistics:

• 79% of recruiters screen applicants using information available online
• 86% of hiring managers rejected someone based on information they found online
• 7 out of 10 of people who are online check other people’s profiles

Typically, when someone does a casual search, they will only read what appears on page one. Most won’t even bother to scroll down to the bottom, so it’s the first five or six links that matter the most. Therefore, owning that digital real estate, or at least a significant part of it, is important to your credibility.

That’s not a big deal if you have a relatively uncommon name like mine. However, what if you have a more popular name, like Laura Powers?

Just who is Laura Powers?

• The musician heard on albums like “Legends of the Goddess?”
• The teenage girl who lives next door to Bart on the Simpsons?
• A custom jeweler from Atlanta?
• Vice president of marketing at Furia Rubel Communications?

Obviously, she’s our VP of marketing. If you know anything about her, it’s not hard to distinguish her from the others. But, what happens if her name drops out of the top five? Her credibility could suffer or she could be missed altogether.

To increase your chances of appearing in the top five, try these tactics:

Blog: Creating a blog can help you to be seen faster. Google’s algorithms like blogs and,
so long as you update the content regularly, you’ve got a good chance of being seen. Make sure your bio and profile information are up-to-date so that you put your best foot forward when someone clicks through.

Engage in social media: It’s rare to find a person who does not have at least one social media profile on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. Make sure you post regularly and that your profile information is complete and presents you in a professional manner. Also, don’t ignore Google+. Connecting your social media profiles to Google+ will help them to appear closer to the top in a Google search. Google likes Google – go figure.

Integrate keywords into your blog and social media: By using keywords specific to your profession, you will score higher when someone searches for your areas of expertise (e.g., marketing), it will help to differentiate you from someone else with the same name (e.g., Laura Powers the jeweler from Atlanta).

Use a content manager: If lack of time is keeping you from engaging in social media, then consider using a content manager to organize your posts. A content manager is simply a computer program that allows publishing, editing and modifying of content on a website. A blog coupled with an RSS feed can serve as a content manager. Other programs like Hootsuite let you set up and distribute media messages at predetermined times. It’s all about using the technology to be more efficient. 

Photos: Don’t underestimate the value of a professional photo, especially in the online environment. Your social media profile photos will often appear in your Google search, so make sure they’re good ones. Ask yourself, could I show my profile photo to my mother? If not, upgrade it now and be sure to use your name in its title. IMG.001 doesn’t cut it.

Video: YouTube has become the second most powerful search engine and Google indexes YouTube videos instantly. In fact, Google owns YouTube, so creating, personalizing and optimizing a YouTube channel will help you to rank higher in a search. Here are a few things to remember: Include your name in the title, check the visibility box, check the email location box and most importantly, choose three to five relevant keywords, separated by quote marks. 

Post on your company’s website: Having your profile connected to other high ranking websites will help to increase your search engine visibility. So, if it’s appropriate, post your bio and photo on your company’s website and blog on your company’s blog.

Get quoted in articles, press releases or on popular blogs: Being mentioned in a relevant article will help your name to rank higher in a search. This can also apply to press releases, if they are optimized with appropriate keywords or appear on a popular website. Is your company’s website popular and well optimized? If there is an opportunity, ask your PR department to issue a press release that mentions your name.

Submit for professional awards: Prestigious awards carry value for your name, especially if the organization posts the winners on their website or in a press release.

Wikipedia: Few of us have the chops to have a Wikipedia page or appear in a Wikipedia article. That said Wikipedia articles appear in over 96% of Google subject matter searches, so being cited in a Wikipedia page will increase your visibility.

There are other ways to increase your visibility on Google, but this should give you plenty to work on. If you’re fighting for that coveted Google space, then you’ll want to start using these tactics on a consistent basis. You never know who is watching.