Kantar announced on Monday that it was going to dispense with many of its brands including TNS, Millward Brown, Lightspeed, Worldpanel, and IMRB, with the goal being to deliver each of its services under the one, Kantar, brand name as of April 2nd.
Somewhat surprisingly, some of the more recent brand creations (Kantar Consulting, Kantar Media, Kantar Health, and Kantar Public) have also been included in the brands to be dropped, as well as country-specific brands.
This is the latest step – in a number of actions – that WPP are taking to push Kantar in a new direction, for the “best interest” of the brand moving forward, including the sale of a majority stake in the brand to an investor which is slated to close sometime mid 2019, according to WPP CEO Mark Read.
Kantar had previously re-branded its twelve operating businesses with the Kantar prefix to unify them under the brand (TNS became Kantar TNS for example), with only Lightspeed remaining independent of the Kantar prefix. This move is a marked change from Kantar’s previous policy of leaving-in-place the acquired brands names.
Kantar’s Global CEO Eric Salama said the move ‘reflects the operational changes already happening across the company, and is driven by a desire to achieve simplicity, scale and impact for clients’ – ultimately making the firm simpler to understand and work with, particularly from a client perspective.
It remains to be seen whether the dispensing of these brands will mean any job cuts for existing Kantar employees, but for the time being, one thing is for sure: Kantar is continuing to make a concerted effort to simplify its brand and ultimately remedy the % decrease in revenue seen in 2018.
