Last April, we announced that we were changing our name from A.J. Antunes & Co. to Antunes and updating several aspects of our brand. The process to get to that announcement took a lot of input, insight and action, and now, one year later, we’re taking a look back.
Getting started
Following our 60th year, which we celebrated in August 2015, we made a conscious decision to take control of our brand and strengthen and clarify it as much as possible.
We knew it would take critical thinking and a clear rebranding strategy since, as a 60-year-old company rooted in family history, our brand is very established.
As we embarked on this journey, we had a few overarching goals to guide us:
- To help clearly position our company in our customers’ mind
- To help differentiate ourselves from competitors
- To define and solidify our brand architecture
- To leverage legacy confidence in the Antunes name
To accomplish these goals, we worked through a multi-step process aimed at helping us to better understand who we are. This would help us move toward who we want to be in the future. This process was comprised of three stages:
Stage 1: Determining brand perception
Stage 2: Defining the brand
Stage 3: Deploying the brand
Stage 1: Determining brand perception
In September 2015, the process began by taking a closer look at our brand — thinking carefully about what it represents and how it communicates our personality, character, mission and promises to our customers.
We sought out perspectives from all sides — from surveying customers and channel members for the external perspective to interviewing our core leadership team — and their collective input was tremendously valuable.
Stage 2: Defining the brand
In Stage 2, we continued the rebrand process by determining and defining the following brand elements:
Brand architecture: how we will structure the brand and any sub brands
Brand positioning, personality and drivers: how we will demonstrate the brand to internal and external audiences
Visual brand identity: how the brand will look
It was in this stage that we decided to change our name to Antunes. The name still honors our founder, August J. “Augie” Antunes, while elevating our family values and vision and positioning us for strategic growth.
Along with the name change, we also unveiled a new logo and tagline. To better reflect our ongoing commitment to reliability and quality, the tagline was changed to “Expect Success”— reminding customers and prospects that with Antunes in their corner, they can expect success.
We recognized that there were some customers and partners that knew us primarily by one of our sub-brands, and others who knew us as something totally different. Because of this, we had been challenged to be able to communicate exactly who we are.
With this in mind, we took a streamlined approach to our brand architecture and eliminated the names of our longtime sub-brands, ROUNDUP® and VIZION™. These products are now grouped into cooking solutions and filtration solutions categories, respectively. The products we manufacture, and the process by which we do that, haven’t changed at all ― just the names.
Stage 3: Deploying the brand
Stage 3 is when we began sharing the new brand and implementing it in a number of ways. We began communicating our new name, brand architecture and brand drivers ― starting with our internal team members, then manufacturer’s reps and other partners, followed by current customers, and then the announcement to the general public in April 2016. The following month, The NRA Show gave us an opportunity to share our new brand with the foodservice community.
In addition to the intentional communication rollout, we staggered the needed brand updates as well. To coincide with the public announcement in April, all communications, both verbal and printed, were updated. This step included everything from changing our email addresses and how we answered the phone at our corporate office to advertising that reflected the new brand.
The process continued with other branded items such as sales tools and engineering documents, and we continue to rollout updated product labels and packaging, documents and signage around our facility.
Although there have been a number of changes as a result of this rebranding process, what didn’t change was our continual commitment to our brand promise:
To drive success for every customer — first by listening, then by delivering on our steadfast commitment to excellence.
Want to see how we live out the Antunes brand every day? Watch this video.
