Designing Change
A Rebrand for Muzak
Courtesy Pentagram
Graphic designers have created some of the world’s best-known logos, from Coke to Mercedes to McDonald’s. Yet their role in establishing a company’s identity is not always understood or valued by senior management. In “Kenny Kahn at Muzak,” HBS professor Linda Hill and research associate Emily Stecker dig deep into the rebranding of a company founded in 1934 that, by the 1980s, was rapidly losing market share and was often equated in the popular mind with anything generic or bland, despite its impressive catalog of some 2 million songs. The case presents the rebranding process from the perspective of Kenny Kahn, vice president of marketing, while also including the insights of Kit Hinrichs, a well-known figure in the design world, and his team at Pentagram, the firm that takes on the Muzak assignment.
“This is a rich story that can be used across several areas,” says Hill, who expects the case to be taught in Marketing and Organizational Behavior courses as well as in design schools. “Most of our change-management cases focus on a CEO or senior leader, not a middle manager, and few consider how to effectively use an outside consultant — in this case, a design consultant.”
It’s easy to see how students would relate to 35-year-old Kahn as he takes on CEO Bill Boyd’s challenge to help revitalize Muzak’s image with clients and its corporate culture on a budget of just $900,000. “Since Muzak’s name was well-known…I met with principals at the biggest ad agencies in the world,” Kahn recalls. “Invariably, when I mentioned my budget, the principal would excuse himself and send in a junior employee.” But Pentagram’s Kit Hinrichs found the challenge intriguing and took it on. “If I fail, no one will ever know,” he tells Kahn, “and if I succeed, everyone will know.”
The goal of presenting Muzak as a hip, unified entity is complicated by the firm’s structure as an organization composed of company-owned and independent affiliates, many of which use different, uncoordinated marketing materials. Presented with a hodgepodge of conflicting visual identities, Hinrichs and his Pentagram team roll up their sleeves and work together with Kahn and others at Muzak to craft the final logo: a sleek, curvy m inside a circle.
But Muzak’s transformation goes far beyond a fresh look. “The company needed to live the brand, and this meant changing the culture,” says Stecker. “Muzak has a huge music library, and many employees came to the company because they love music. Making music an integral, daily aspect of company culture enabled employees to better deliver on their goal of creating value for their customers through experiential marketing.”
Change doesn’t come easily, of course. For starters, Kahn has little leverage to convince independent affiliates to adopt the new logo and the added expense of new marketing materials. Faced with the task of influencing affiliates over which he has no direct authority, Kahn is persistent, letting the materials do most of the talking. Slowly, he gets the buy-in he’s been looking for as affiliates see the new logo’s influence on clients.
At the same time, Boyd and his senior management team invigorate a jaded corporate culture that is divorced from its creative roots in the music business. They reframe the company’s mission, using meetings and even Muzak hats and T-shirts to jump-start employees’ emotional connection to their work as “audio architects” who provide the soundtrack for fashionable retail chains and a wide variety of work sites. Boyd notes, “Previously, our employees did not publicize their employment at Muzak since it raised all of the questions about ‘elevator music.’ Suddenly, the excitement of the new brand and the new story had become almost viral. …We wanted everyone to know where we worked and how lucky we were to work there.”
Hill and Stecker make it clear that a new brand identity can be a tool for organizational change, not just bottom-line results — although it’s worth noting that Muzak also enjoyed an uptick in its financials. From 1997 (the year Boyd was appointed CEO and launched the rebranding) to 2000, Muzak’s revenues more than doubled, from $91 million to $192 million.
