As a brand development agency, we love to see large company rebrands. We enjoy breaking them down to see the rationale behind it as we're very inquisitive and constructive by nature.
Recently courier service, Hermes, decided to rebrand to 'Evri'... and well, it just hasn't quite delivered! Pun intended.
Why did Hermes rebrand?
One of the reasons Hermes rebranded was to reposition itself following ESG Principles - Environmental, Social and Governance. Hermes also rebranded to Evri to hopefully improve its reputation after having a large amount of negative feedback for it's poor customer service, but it seems to us that they haven't quite achieved this goal with the new brand.
Here's what the Chief Executive, Martijn de Lange had to say:
“This rebrand follows significant investment and two years of dramatic growth, which has resulted in our entire business going through a major transformation program.
“It is more than just a name change – it is a statement of intent of our commitment to leading the way in creating responsible delivery experiences for ‘Evri one,’ ‘Evri where.’
“It heralds a new culture and an even better way of doing things in an ever-evolving world, building on our achievements and successes.”
So why doesn't the new Hermes rebrand to Evri, deliver?
Let's ignore the visuals at the moment, although we're probably all thinking the same thing! Instead, let's go to some of the messaging and relate it back to their objectives.
Under their logo on their website, they have chosen the strapline 'The new Hermes'...
If one of your reasons to rebrand is to gain a better reputation, then it would be common sense to not mention your old brand name, which has a bad one. This is a bit like Loki dying his hair blonde and saying he's the new and improved Loki – he'll still be causing mayhem and no one would believe him.
Hermes also have 'Your cheap parcel delivery & courier service' plastered above the fold on their website. Again, this message could have been articulated much better. The perspective for cheap is often 'not great', which is the whole preception they are trying to avoid.
Cheap sounds like Hermes are going to be rushing, losing parcels and taking the very little care when handling packages, which has been a sticking point that has caused the brand controversy.
Although the strapline is very weak and obvious to begin with, they could have played around with replacing the word cheap - as cheap isn't inclusive and doesn't cater for 'Evri-one'. They could have simply replaced cheap with other words such as 'Your easy parcel delivery & courier service', or 'Your dedicated parcel delivery & courier service'.
To summarise their messaging - Trust has been a huge footfall for Hermes, but they haven't done enough with their brand to change their audiences perception. When sending parcels, people need two things, to make sure their parcel arrives and to make sure it's not damaged on the way and the new brand is not easily perceieved as trustworthy.
Hermes Rebranding Visuals
Now, let's look at the visuals of the brand. (The Send help above was intentional).
We think the value of diversity and catering for everyone is great, however the visual execution of the brand is quite an eye-sore and would certainly make most graphic designers cringe. Having said that, we are all about changing the face of the industry and going against the grain, it's just this execution hasn't hit the mark in our opinion.
The whole concept comes across as quite random, inconsistent and ever-changing, which isn't what you want when sending parcels - remember your brand reflects your business!
The Result
We're very interested to see how this plays out for Hermes / Evri, but only time will tell.
There's currently a lot of mockery from the end-users on twitter, which you can view for yourselves here: Twitter search - Evri.
We of course would have loved to have had the brief - Maybe next time, Evri?
If you're thinking of rebranding yourself, get in touch to see how we can help.