Titan rebrands to reflect broader horizon

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Twenty-five years after establishing phenomenal brand recall with a range of watches aided by the legendary Mozart's 25th Symphony, Titan Industries is now donning a new identity. It will set it up for recall as a lifestyle company.

For starters, Titan Industries will be known as Titan Company Limited (Titan) and for the first time have a corporate logo - Titan Star. The four-pointed star, with a distinct embedded 'T', will denote the many businesses and strengths of the company as it enters a slew of new categories such as fragrances and helmets.

"The corporate entity has its own personality and that is different from its watch brand, Titan. We needed to carve out an identity for this entity to reflect our corporate culture and why our customers, employees and franchisees come to us," Bhaskar Bhat, managing director, Titan Company says.

Bhat adds that "The name change was one of the outcomes of a big project, Titan Next, of understanding who we are. We also realised that 'Industries' no longer captures the spirit of the company, so we began to explore a name change".

As with Titan's strategic initiatives which are put to rigorous tests, the brand revamp exercise was on for a year, even as Titan considered around 40 probable names.

"We shortlisted about six-seven names and went through a brainstorming session with our employees, customers, franchisees, directors, investors and vendors before finalising the new name and logo," Bhat informs.

S Ravi Kant, CEO of the company's eyewear division says the word 'Industries' in the company's name was limiting its scope in the consumer's mind as it was perceived to be only a manufacturing company - a long way from the lifestyle-oriented image it wants to carry forward.

"The word 'Company' is very contemporary and very modern, as opposed to 'Industries' that refers to manufacturing," Kant explains.

Though the company has a sizeable retail presence in the jewellery business with Tanishq and the accessories space with brands such as Fastrack and Titan Eye+, the name 'Titan' only conjures images of watches in the Indian consumer's mind. The new initiative is an effort to direct consumers' to its multi-category identity.

"There has long been a need for a company logo. Besides, we needed to create an identity for the corporate brand because watches are the first thing that comes to one's mind at the mention of Titan," Ravi Kant says.

The logo has been designed by Ray + Keshavan, part of WPP's global brand agency, The Brand Union, which also counts The Trident, Arvind, Shoppers Stop and the Bangalore and Hyderabad International Airports among its clients.

With a new corporate identity and a logo in place, the company is raring to rapidly expand its product portfolio in different product segments.

The company plans to foray into the fragrance market within the next 15 days, Bhat informs. The company is also exploring a new line of branded helmets soon after the fragrance launch.

Titan is also in the process of preparing a detailed business plan for the next five years. "We will take a look at existing businesses and how do we grow them in the years to come. We are going to enter a whole lot of products in the lifestyle space. The business plan will help us explore newer product areas in the coming years," Ravi Kant says.

The company is developing the five-year business plan in-house. "It is a huge exercise and we are involving a lot of people like our employees and various stakeholders. The plan will be ready by the end of this fiscal," he adds."Using the quality and trust that Tata Group stands for, we will bring about a big change in the years to come in all products that we are going to launch in the future," Ravi Kant concludes.