Rebranding a Century-old Business with Kevin Warren of UPS

In a company that has been working and succeeding for more than a century, change doesn’t always seem necessary. And even for newer brands, when you find a winning formula, when you have revenue coming in, and when consumers have grown to trust you, why even bother to do anything differently? 

This was the predicament facing UPS recently. UPS had done an amazing job for 100 years building the company into a wild success. The problem was that if something didn’t change, the next 100 years were very much in jeopardy. Customer expectations were changing, the younger generation was moving on, and if UPS was going to deliver for the future, it was going to need to embrace a new outlook, some new strategies, and it was going to need some … swagger. 

Kevin Warren, CMO of UPS, was brought into the company to help deliver that future. Hear how he did it on this episode of Business X factors.

Main Takeaways: 

• Always On Your Toes: Companies that have a winning formula may think they can rest easy and that it is not necessary to change. But consumer expectations are changing, and how they engage with businesses is increasingly moving online, and even that shifts constantly. It is important that companies remain commercially innovative, entrepreneurial, and agile to be able to adapt to changes in shopping habits and technology. Those that don’t innovate quick enough will be replaced.
• Cool Story, Bro: The younger generation is much harder to impress with the strategies of old. Legacy brands need to work to stay relevant among the next generation of consumers. That means changing brand messaging, operating in new channels, and even modifying internal culture to stay with the times.
• Mine the  Data: Many companies sit on a mountain of data, but few of them use that data to its fullest potential. Invest in your data and analytics team in order to draw as much information as you can from the data you collect and that the insights you find are available throughout the organization and don't sit in silos. 

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