Pat Cashwell, Aurelio Fanoni, and Andrea Moroni dropped by to visit yesterday. They had some things to show me that I can't talk about yet, but we got into some great discussions about the branding realizations ABB had visited upon them by their end-users and distribution channels. And you will be extremely interested in what they told me, when I can talk about it. Hee. Hee. Heee.
We talked about the Directory of Lost Companies, and how I still get calls asking when Fischer & Porter went out of business...which brought a rueful laugh from Fanoni, who said that he felt that ABB had made a huge mistake. "We believed," he said,"that everybody knew ABB...and it turned out they did, for motors, power, robotics and construction...but not for automation and controls."
Cashwell noted that the flipside of his business card (and I believe all ABB employees in North America do the same thing) had the old logos (F&P, Bailey, Taylor, TBI, Sensycon, Hartmann & Braun, Kent Meters and K-Flow on it, with the tagline: "The Experience of many makes us stronger as one."
Finally, it appears ABB is figuring it out. (Image courtesy of Laura Patrick)
I guess there are two ways to do branding of acquisitions. One is the Danaher way. Leave the individual company brands alone, and maybe tag "A Danaher company" on in little bitty type. This works, and usually doesn't involve companies getting smaller, losing market share, and losing brand identity. On the other hand, it doesn't provide the synergy of companies in the same markets working together to serve the customer and get business.
The other way to do it is the ABB way, which involves lots of blood on the floor. ABB is, of course, nowhere near alone at doing this...just ask anybody who used to either work for or buy from a ThermoElectron company how much fun it has been to keep up with their corporate gyrations for the last ten years. Eventually, hopefully, you start regaining the market share you lost because you gave up the branding values that made that market share achievable in the first place.
Once again, this branding and acquisition dance is possibly good for the company, but doesn't do the end users much of a service at all. In fact, over the past fifteen years, it has done the end users a grave disservice. Now that most of the consolidation is apparently over and strength has returned to the large automation vendors, like ABB, it is a far better time to be an end user than it was when we were all trying to figure out if the DCS we were buying would still be made on Monday next.
Walt
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