from the department of "Datsun is Nissan…"

This just in…Emerson is dropping the Saab name from their TankRadar product…it will be forevermore known as Rosemount TankRadar.
This brings up a lesson in branding.
Emerson is the only automation company to ever do a ‘Datsun-is-Nissan’ type corporate re-branding exercise and have not missed a quarter’s sales or profit target…and as far as I know, this applies outside the automation industry as well. Worse yet, from the point of view of us magazines, they consolidated and cut their advertising budget during all of it.
There are lots of ‘lost companies’ out there because their parent decided to feature the corporate name instead of trading on the accumulated brand value of the trade names they had acquired in the 1990s orgy of acquisitions and agglomerations.
You can only do that if your brand, or your branding strategy going forward (AND your advertising budget in some cases) is strong enough to support the change-over.
I was talking earlier this week to a former Procter and Gamble brand manager who is now marketing manager at a mid-sized automation company…and he noted that in comparison to what P&G did as a matter of course, the automation industry is “baby steps.”
Hopefully, all of Emerson’s radar customers will find them now that they don’t get to call it Saab anymore.