New Delhi: The WPP-owned data and insights firm Kantar will function under a single brand name “Kantar" effective April 2019, as it does away with its sub-brands across markets .
The changes will be effective worldwide, where the company currently functions under Kantar Consulting, Kantar Health, Kantar IMRB, Kantar Media, Kantar Millward Brown, Kantar Public, Kantar TNS, Kantar Worldpanel and Lightspeed brands that provide insights and research to various industries. The varied brand names will be retired and all the services will now be offered under Kantar, the London-headquartered company said in a statement on March 18.
In India, the changes will reflect in all the brands except for Consulting and Kantar Media that do not operate in the country yet.
“The change in our branding reflects the operational changes already happening across our company, and is driven by a desire to achieve simplicity, scale and impact for our clients. This one change will make Kantar easier for clients to understand and work with," Eric Salama, CEO, Kantar said in the release.
Mandy Pooler, CMO, Kantar, added: “Together, Kantar understands more about how people think, feel, shop, share, vote and view than any other company. Simplifying our brand strategy is a subtle, but important signal of our evolution and our mission – inspiring the world’s most important organisations by providing the most complete understanding of the people they serve".
Kantar has been working towards consolidating its brands under one name over the last few years now. Since 2016, it has brought the number of brands that it operates down from 18 to 9 last year, according to a news article in Adweek. The recent move will subsume all brands under one brand. In 2016, the company also integrated the back-end of TNS, Millward Brown and IMRB in India
Changes at the company come after it recently launched Kantar Marketplace, a global on-demand research and insights store. Kantar is part of advertising and public relations company WPP that also owns Ogilvy and J Walter Thompson ad agencies. Kantar services corporates and governments in a 100 countries.
