A cautionary tale of changing your brand name and not doing your homework

When Australian Family Physician (AFP) changed its name to The Australian Journal of General Practice (AJGP), it seemed like a logical move. The outcome proved very different.

At 10am last Friday, in a small meeting room of the Australian Medical Publishing Company (Ampco) , on the 23rd floor of Town Hall Tower in Sydney’s CBD, the cream of Australian medical publishers were meeting for their annual reveal of their syndicated readership research results.

As if resisting the march of time and technology, these publishers and their print publications (digital too) are still a major vehicle for pharmaceutical marketers, and the readership results technically set the bar on how they share their money out in the following year. Tightly targeted print distribution and regulations surrounding display advertising for pharmaceuticals has kept print as the most effective way to do branding in this market.

Most years this meeting is a very banal ritual. Usually each publication might shift their overall readership figure by a percent or even less and nothing really changes. The publishers have a quick whinge about market conditions, exchange a few war stories, and leave. Same as it ever was.

But this year there was a lot of tension in the room. For the last three years, the market brand gorilla, the weekly newspaper Australian Doctor, had been sliding slowly in readership, and one of the medical journals, that owned by the Royal Australian College of GPs (RACGP) had been gaining to the point where now the leader only had the slimmest of margins at 71.7% to 71.4%.

Although statistically the 0.3% was well within the error margin on the readership research, and therefore there was technically no difference in readership, even last year, between the titles, Australian Doctor had been No 1 for the best part of 30 years. It was in their DNA and it was a cornerstone of all their branding. Losing the actual lead could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars shifting out of one publication into the new leader.

The most tense person in the room at the beginning of the meeting had to be the publisher of Australian Doctor. Losing meant a lot. Maybe even his job over time. In preparation, there had apparently been many scenario meetings back at Australian Doctor.

But in retrospect, it was the sales director of the RACGP journal that should have been the worried one. Although the RACGP journal was trending in every way to take the crown this year, for reasons which seemed to many in the college completely sensible, the RACGP had changed the name of its publication in February, just three months before the three-month annual syndicated readership research period started.

The RACGP journal sales director has been selling the RACGP journal for many years now, and doing an increasingly good job as it’s readership marched up. His best year was this past year. He was a little nervous. Changing the name to him didn’t seem like the ideal thing to do given how they had already been tracking.

When he opened his research pack to take a peek at the top line he went white. The RACGP journal, which had been named Australian Family Physician (AFP), from 1971 until February this year, and had been redesigned and renamed to The Australian Journal of General Practice (AJGP), had suffered the worst single drop in readership history by a factor of two. They had lost 22% of their readers. They had dropped from 71.4% to 55.6% in readership.

The mood around the room became disturbingly eery as everyone realised what had happened. No casual banter about market conditions or colourful client stories were exchanged. It was mostly silent. Australian Doctor was saved, but was not about to boast about it. And the other major clinical journal, Medicine Today,  was suddenly a strong No 1 clinical journal at 68%, and the next possible contender to the crown at only 3 points behind Australian Doctor, which as the trends predicted had slipped again in its readership from 71.7% down to 71%.

Given the trend of the last three years, it seemed entirely likely that if the RACGP had left AFP alone, it would have been No 1 this year. That might have meant a huge shift in marketing dollars to the title. When I was publisher of Australian Doctor a few years back, and the challenger was the now defunct weekly tabloid newspaper Medical Observer (I say defunct because MO is now an A4 monthly insert into Australian Doctor), we calculated that if we were beaten by just 0.1% and could not claim that No 1 title, we may have lost as much as $2million in one year to the challenger.

But it’s worse than that for the RACGP.

Now they have to face off with media buyers with the stark reality that their name change has meant that 22% of their past readers and members do not recognise them any more. If that was converted to a rate drop by a nasty buyer (they’re mostly all the opposite), that would amount to something like $400,000 a year for the RACGP.

Fortunately for the RACGP, most of the medical buyers are savvy. They realise the RACGP journal was nearly at No 1 and that the college is a hugely powerful influence in the market. They aren’t likely to abandon them in relative terms to this drop in readership. But it is likely that some hit is coming as it is apparent that the drop in terms of actual eyeballs on publication page is very real.

Technically the difference in money between keeping the journal with its old name and hitting number one without any of the promotional costs of changing the name, versus losing 22% of your readership, amortised over ,say, the next three to four years, is a figure well into the multi-millions for the RACGP.

But it might be worse than a money problem. A major KPI for the RACGP board is member engagement. And it’s a well known fact that in most surveys of member organisations, the publication they receive is usually recognised as the highest valued single item of their membership. You can see the effect in quality publications from the NRMA, all the major health insurers, all the big accounting associations, and even the luxury car owners member clubs. Print publications done well are a major tool of member engagement and perceived membership value. The AJGP is a great publication. But the RACGP just dropped 22% of their member engagement via this great publication on a brand name change.

Looking back, the RACGP’s decision seems mad. What were they thinking would happen?

At the time we all heard they were changing the name, the new branding came with a lot of logic to it. The word physician isn’t used to describe GPs in Australia. It’s used in the US. GP is a specialisation and the RACGP had done much in terms of consumer branding to push this message and the GP brand, especially with their campaign, ‘Not Just A GP’, which you might have seen on TV or on airport billboards. In addition, physician is the term used to describe another speciality – Physicians – who have a separate medical college, The Royal Australian College of Physicians (RACP).

Adding the word journal to the name seemed like a good idea, too. It would add credibility to the publication among doctors, put it up in the more esteemed branding league of the AMA’s much more academically cited Medical Journal of Australia, and lift the credibility of the journal overseas where it is distributed to 2000 libraries and institutions, and is cited by major global medical journal indexes.

That was not terrible logic.

But it seems there wasn’t much thought or even research on the potential downside of the change.

When a company changes a brand name you will usually see a very critical reason underlying the decision – a merger, an acquisition, or a major strategy product change - and a tonne of research and organisational re-positioning. The RACGP did virtually none of this. They didn’t check properly. They didn’t market that heavily. They just thought it was a good idea. On spec, it seemed to be.

One thing that should have caused the RACGP executive to pause and think harder was that in 1999, after being put upon severely for more license fees in a stressed market, the licensee publishers of global medical brand Modern Medicine, dropped their license and launched the same magazine as Medicine Today. These are savvy experienced publishers who understood what they were up against. They threw a fortune at research, and pre and post marketing. And then lost around 9% points in readership over the subsequent two survey periods.

One of Medicine Today’s publishers says that it was the fight of their lives and they did not recover what they lost in readership for nearly 10 years.

But in a gesture of publishing comradery and goodwill for its major competitor, the other publisher at Medicine Today (yes, there are two) described the AJGP research result, and their sudden elevation to the No 1 journal and next contender for No1 in market overall, as a sort of “publishing version of Steven Bradbury”. He added, “I think it was just a series of marketing errors and they will recover lost ground pretty quickly”.

That’s another quirky thing about the medical media market. It’s still manned by authentic and gentle business folk.

The RACGP, perhaps optimistically, also seems to be planning on a faster comeback than Medicine Today experienced. Some inside the organisation even think they might bounce all the way back in one year. The evidence, they say, is that in each wave of the research waves this year they were getting better steadily (the research is in three monthly waves). They also realise they need to a lot more research and marketing work, and fast.

Maybe they will come back quickly. Maybe it’s “just a blip” as one RACGP insider said to me. But if its not, it may end up serving as a cautionary tale for any company or brand which think a brand name change is a walk in the park.