Facebook’s transition to Meta: A bold and ambitious move, say experts

A brand is always the true face of any company – be it a corporate or product in the market place. Brands become familiar and connect well with their audience over a period of time as they project and convey the correct values and vision through the brand identity. There are several iconic brands across categories who are very careful when it comes to rebranding. They never like to tinker with a strong brand name and identity unless there is a definite business purpose or a drastic shift in the overall focus of the company’s strategy.

While in the last 15 years the social media penetration has altered and there is dramatic shift in online engagement, social media platforms like Facebook are constantly innovating through technology to give their audiences a very great and friendly experience. Facebook has rewritten the rules in social media, but has also found itself involved in some controversies starting from encouraging political campaign, hate campaigns and fake news. While this has been denied by the founders and the team, but they are diligently watched by the government watchdogs.

Facebook last underwent a rebrand in November 2019, when it updated the company branding to be clearer about the products that come from Facebook. It introduced a new company logo and further distinguished the Facebook company from the Facebook app, which kept its own branding. The branding was designed for clarity and used custom typography and capitalisation to create visual distinction between the company and app.

Recently, while presenting the financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2021, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said, “I’m excited to see our major initiatives around creators and community, commerce, and building the next computing platform coming together to start to bring the vision of the metaverse to life.” However, little is known about what this metaverse would be like. So far, it is a concept within the realms of science fiction. There was no clarity then, but it was expected that there is some definite change that was likely to happen on the branding front as it was in the news for quite some time.

At this point of time, one cannot really decode the need for the name change of the company to Meta Platforms. Actually, what Facebook needs right now is to clear up their image on sharing fake news and political misinformation on their sites. How much of this rebranding exercise with the new corporate name Meta will mitigate the brand only time will tell as we are today in a dynamic media world where everything is available in real-time. But the direction taken today seems to address and focus on the next generation of technology and give them a larger playground to be supreme, innovative with a separate face and recognition for Facebook to be seen as an independent brand dynamic brand with some inherent strengths that they have built over a period of time.

Few years back Google rebranded the parent company as Alphabet Inc. in 2015, which turned Google into a wholly-owned subsidiary along with several other businesses. While the name of the company changed, but the brand is still vibrant and going strong. In 2001, Philip Morris announced it was changing the name of its parent company to Altria Group, part of an effort to shake negative associations with the lawsuits against its cigarette brands. Now Facebook has more or less followed the same lines and has changed its corporate name to Meta at a time when the social networking giant is going through a major PR crisis. The parent company’s name has been changed as part of broadening its reach beyond social media into areas like virtual reality (VR), Zuckerberg announced last week.

Adding further, had he said, “I am proud to announce that starting today, our company is now Meta. Our mission remains the same, still about bringing people together, our apps and their brands, they're not changing.” Meanwhile, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram will continue to keep their respective names. Facebook has also announced its intent to hire 10,000 people in the European Union for building the metaverse. “We’ve learned a lot from struggling with social issues and living under closed platforms, and now it is time to take everything that we've learned and help build the next chapter,” Zuckerberg maintained at an annual conference for developers.

Commenting on the new name and the identity of Facebook, Ashwini Deshpande, Co-Founder, Director, Elephant Design, said, “For a house of brands in content and media space, Meta is an ace of a name at this point in time. It liberates the house from perception of being social media bouquet into future tech group. The squat infinity loop is rather unremarkable and overused. Since the name is so future ready and so vast in its potential, perhaps no visual identity could have been enough to describe the scale and possibilities.”

Lloyd Mathias, Business Strategist and Investor, felt that the rebranding was a great move to reorient the company from where they started off – as a social media platform to their wider play with the many products that they have added on – Instagram, WhatsApp, Occulus, etc. “It also signals their ambition to transition beyond just being a social media company to a larger player in the metaverse,” he added.

Facebook is treading down the path of tech companies like Google who changed the name of the parent company as their ambitions and scope of business expanded. Google created Alphabet to signal it was more than a search company as did Snapchat when it renamed its parent Snap Inc. “I think the new logo for Meta that looks like the symbol for infinity has a certain dynamism to it. Facebook has been laying the groundwork for increasing its focus on the next generation of technology and this is a terrific announcement of that transition,” he added. 

Big global brands are very careful when they look at a fresh perspective when it comes to rebranding. Sharing his point of view on the name change, Shrenik Gandhi, CEO and Co-founder, White Rivers Media, remarked, “I think it’s a bold and ambitious move. Any organisation, especially of the scale of Facebook, gets at maximum one chance to rebrand the identity. This brand name change is towards a larger ‘universe’ which Facebook, now Meta, aspires to achieve and it is certainly a big step in the right direction. It will channelise all energies towards the single larger vision which team Mark Zuckerberg had envisioned of creating a metaverse.  A new milestone has been established in the digital ecosystem and the journey has got a lot more exciting now.”

“Clever is the word that comes to mind,” said Vikram Gaikwad, Co-Founder & CCO, Underdog, Co-Founder, Centrick. Adding further, he said, “A wise player never puts everything in one basket. Facebook became the company Facebook because there was nothing else on the horizon then. But with every individual brand under fb becoming almost as prominent, there was an urgent need to take the higher ground and look at tech and not social media as the business model. After all, tech is what got Zuck here in the first place. It is only fair that from the (u)niverse of fb, the company now looks at the (meta)verse with the development of so many tech platforms and the possibilities of so many more to come.”

Through this rebranding, they have created a basket which will carry different companies or applications which will help them discover their vision and create other areas of expertise. The earlier identity was that much more restrictive in a sense and did not allow them the rub-off that was rightfully theirs.

Amyn Ghadiali, Vice President - Business and Strategy, Gozoop Group, too, thought it was a very smart move. “Also, considering the fact that the name of the umbrella brand as Facebook was becoming restrictive. Meta suddenly presents a newer and bolder vision for the organisation making Facebook one of the many businesses it is building. This also helps the brand in creating a paradigm shift, especially at a time when Facebook has been receiving a lot of bad PR, and if ever push comes to shove, it is always a line of business that gets axed rather than the entire company. This, according to me, is what makes brand building so magical.”

Along similar lines, Sanjay Trehan, Digital & New Media Consultant, said, “I think it is smart thinking by the company as the rebranding is of the parent company and not of individual brands. It positions the company as one which is looking at harnessing the opportunities that metaverse presents by creating a holistic and immersive experience for consumers deploying AI, VR, AR and new Internet technologies that are seeking to blur the divide between physical and virtual worlds.”

While the rebranding may lead to pecuniary benefit for the company in terms of value creation and may pique investors’ interest, it is essentially about perception management and priming for the future. It may also set the agenda for its product brands to evolve in sync with the possibilities and new frontiers that metaverse will open up.

Giving her perspective, Ronita Mukerjee Executive Director, Client Services, Landor & Fitch, remarked, “Facebook’s vision of living in a metaverse, and going beyond is exciting and confusing at the same time. That being said, the narrative of ‘going beyond’ is not new. Many brands have made similar commitments in the past. But, intelligent and ownable execution can make a big difference. And this is where you start to see lack of expertise in the brand transformation journey. The infinity loop is an overused visual metaphor to demonstrate possibilities. It doesn’t match the natural and vivid intent of the Metaverse that Mark Zuckerberg envisions. The colour palette feels cold and lacking in empathy. Blue alone cannot cue trust. When you name a global brand, just trademark checks are not enough. Cultural checks across geographies become critical as well. Meta means dead in Hebrew. To summarise, the rebrand is a missed opportunity to show Meta as positive, thoughtful and assuring; brand associations that are much needed for the group.”

Shashwat Das, Founder Director, Almond Branding, added here, “It is a step towards building an umbrella brand which has grown much more than where it started from. First step was to bring Instagram, WhatsApp and other platforms all under one roof – Facebook. But however hard you try, Facebook-the corporate brand still had the perception of being a social media company. Facebook now is much more than just the social media platform Facebook. The vision is much bigger. The corporate brand Facebook would perhaps like to drive the next wave of internet technologies. Hence the distinction between the parent company and the social media platform was the need of the hour. It gives a better structure to the Brand Architecture and is smarter from an investor-friendly perspective.”

Choosing the name Meta demonstrates the company’s and its founder’s focus on the science-fiction inspired term ‘metaverse’ – a concept that’s supposed to bridge the gap between the physical and virtual world.

The change of name can also be a subtle attempt to grow beyond a brand name that has already been tarnished and maligned by public criticism. “However, I personally doubt the extent to which it can help shift public opinion, as it still remains Zuckerberg’s company after all,” Das concluded.