Titan Company : Rebranding to a Lifestyle Brand

Corporate Brand : Titan Company

Brand Analysis # 531

Titan Industries was born in 1985 as a joint-venture between Tata Group and Tamilnadu Industrial Development Corporation. Titan Industries introduced Titan Quartz watches to the Indian market in 1986 and virtually transformed the Indian watch market dominated by the likes of HMT and Allwyn. 

With smart branding and some cool advertisements, Titan Watches quickly became the market leader and had created a strong premium image in the market. Titan Industries later build various brands targeting different segments in the Rs 4000-4200 crore Indian time-wear market ( source : Business Standard)

Titan Industries' brand portfolio consists of 

Fastrack : targeting youngsters

Tanishq : lightweight jewelry 

Sonata.: Low priced

Xylys : premium end

The Titan brand adopts a sub-branding strategy where various sub-brands target various segments in the market. The notable sub-brands are   Titan Raga, Titan Zoop,Titan Edge, Orion, Purple, Obaku, Tycoon, Bandhan, Octane, Automatic and HTSE series. ( source : Titan Website)

Titan Industries also diversified into jewelry with the brand Tanishq and then to eye-wear with Titan Eye+ brands.

This year, Titan Industries decided to rebrand itself as Titan Company Ltd. According to news-reports, the name change was to signify the corporate brand's movement from a watch company to a lifestyle company. The company leaders thought that the term " industries" now is not relevant in the firm's new directions.

The current corporate rebranding of Titan Industries to Titan Company has also given a new logo for the corporate brand. The new brand elements were designed by the famed agency Ray + Keshavan.

The current rebranding has also an interesting offshoot. Now there are two brands - Corporate brand Titan Company with its own logo and the watch brand - Titan with another logo. Newsreports suggest that the watch brand will retain the existing logo and the tagline - Be More. Since the Titan Watch brand is the most recognized and recalled brand, I am not sure how the name change of the corporate brand will help build a lifestyle image. 

Titan Industries started with a single brand- single product company. The initial portfolio strategy was to build a branded house where all the product ( watches ) had the same brand name ( Titan) which incidentally was the corporate brand. The brand architecture was to have sub-brands targeting various segments. This strategy was changed with the introduction of brands like Sonata , Tanishq etc. Fastrack which was launched as a sub-brand later became an individual brand.

Hence over the period of time, Titan Industries' brand portfolio became a mix of House of Brand and Branded House strategy. There were  many individual brands in the portfolio, at the same time bulk of the mid-range watches were endorsed by the corporate brand - Titan. Titan brand was also used to endorse categories like eye-wear .The company also plans to include categories like fragrances in the near future.

With the launch of a logo and name Titan Company, it is to be assumed that the company now wants to develop a corporate brand different from the watch-brand.  The issue here  is that both the brands are the same. 

Confusing isn't it !