Earlier this week, Nice announced it had completed the transition from Nortek Control to Nice North America. Those who follow Nice know that the company is a global manufacturer of smart home, security and building automation solutions and acquired Nortek Control last October.
One of the most significant challenges that large companies face after acquiring other entities is the brand confusion phenomenon that often results in the aftermath. Regardless of the strength of the larger organization’s individual brands, customer confusion becomes a genuine risk. After all, a common dissatisfaction that customers have is a similarity among brands, even when the same company offers them.
With its acquisition of Nortek Control, Nice knew branding confusion could be a real problem. Consider the sheer number of brands now under the Nice corporate umbrella:
Each of these brands has its own unique level of equity, customer awareness and purpose. Consolidating these product lines under a single brand would probably do more harm than good. But one could also reasonably argue that associating these brands with the master Nice brand benefits customers who like the idea of a “master” corporate entity with customer support and portfolio diversity advantages.
With that backdrop, it’s refreshing to learn that Nice is taking an admirably measured and deliberate approach to comprehending these brands under a master corporate umbrella. With this announcement, the company is retiring Nortek Control and directing the consolidation of several brands for the CI channel. Over the next 12 months, the residentially-targeted brand names of SpeakerCraft, ELAN and Panamax will transition to Nice.
Conversely, the company will preserve the brand names of Proficient, Furman, 2GIG, Gefen, HySecurity and Abode as these entities have commercial and security integration attributes. With these actions, these changes will allow Nice to gradually extract leverage (over the next year) from a vast collection of solutions for the home and building management markets.
Why is Nice taking this approach?
Let’s face it: customers like simplicity, and branding is not immune to this principle. This branding strategy will help Nice intensify its global brand name and coagulate its strong brand position in North America. It’s also hard to ignore that Nice’s partners — — spanning from integrators, dealers, distributors and builders — — will see enormous advantages from the company’s wider portfolio that spans the commercial, residential and industrial segments. A more comprehensive partner program, as well as enlarged training and field certification opportunities (such as Nice University) will also be in the offing. Recognizing that dealer training can often be boring, the company indicated that its education programs would be “gamified” with motivational swag and free products for technicians participating in its training programs.
To be fair, the Nortek Control brand had become a bit of a tortuous mess over the past half-decade when Nortek was sold to Melrose Industries in 2016. After Melrose acquired Nortek in 2016, it folded its Core Brands collection (Xantech, SpeakerCraft, Elan Panamax, Proficient and Gefen) into the Nortek Security & Control canopy. Nice’s branding strategy sets out to sort this out in a reasonable and logical manner.
Some closing thoughts
There are reasons to be optimistic about Nice’s prospects with its new branding strategy. The company certainly has heft: founded in 1993, the Italian company employs approximately 3,000 employees across 22 countries and operates 15 global technology centers. Undoubtedly, Nice S.p.A. knows the smart home space quite well, and its know-how was enhanced with its 2018 acquisition of Abode, a well-known DIY company in the home security system market.
At an exclusive analyst meeting held in Nice North America’s headquarters in Carlsbad, California last week, the company previewed this new branding strategy. During a tour of its new Experience Center, it was difficult not to be impressed with the numerous demos of its innovative solutions that included home entertainment, shading, control, audio, security access and security gate solutions. The comprehensiveness of Nice’s portfolio is one of the best-kept secrets in the smart home, smart building and control systems markets. This new branding strategy will help drive more focused awareness of what Nice has to offer consumers and commercial customers.
One last observation: in a revealing interview with the Nice executive team, the leadership detailed its new branding strategy, as well as its belief that it can only optimize the new company branding by soliciting employee feedback across the organization to ensure that rank and file employees are bought into the company’s new brand absorption strategy for the multiple product brands formerly housed under the Nortek Control umbrella. As the saying goes, the proof of how the company executes its new strategy will be in the pudding. Still, the Nice executive team appears to understand the opportunity it has before them and genuinely believes that all company cylinders must operate in synch for the company to boost its vast portfolio of products, solutions and services. The company’s newly announced branding strategy is an excellent start and will presumably receive a robust and positive reaction from its dealer, distributor, channel and builder community partners.
Mark Vena is the CEO and Principal Analyst at SmartTech Research based in Silicon Valley. As a technology industry veteran for over 25 years, Mark covers many consumer tech topics, including PCs, smartphones, smart home, connected health, security, PC and console gaming, and streaming entertainment solutions. Mark has held senior marketing and business leadership positions at Compaq, Dell, Alienware, Synaptics, Sling Media and Neato Robotics. Mark has appeared on CNBC, NBC News, ABC News, Business Today, The Discovery Channel and other media outlets. Mark’s analysis and commentary have appeared on Forbes.com and other well-known business news and research sites. His comments about the consumer tech space have repeatedly appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, TechNewsWorld and other news publications.
SmartTech Research, like all research and tech industry analyst firms, provides or has provided paid services to technology companies. These services include research, analysis, advising, consulting, benchmarking, acquisition or speaking sponsorships. Companies mentioned in this article may have utilized these services.
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