Matsushita Goes Totally Panasonic

The Japanese electronics maker has announced its intentions to merge all products under the more popular and recognizable brand name

by Kenji Hall

Back in July, 2006, officials at Matsushita Electric Industrial (MC) e-mailed questionnaires to journalists asking for advice. They had surveyed consumers and found the Panasonic brand name used for the company's TVs, digital cameras, rice cookers, and vacuum cleaners was far more recognizable than the Matsushita name. What, they asked, would it take for the media to refer to the company as Panasonic?

"We feel it is very important that we deliver the consistent brand image concentrating on 'Panasonic,'" read the e-mail. Although Matsushita officials—including Chairman Kunio Nakamura, in an interview with BusinessWeek—denied there was any internal debate, the message seemed clear: The 88-year-old company was considering dropping the name of its founder, Konnosuke Matsushita, from the masthead.

On Jan. 10, President Fumio Ohtsubo made it official by announcing the company had decided to change its name to Panasonic, pending shareholders' approval at a meeting in June. The new name goes into effect Oct. 1 and reflects Ohtsubo's eagerness to step up the company's brand profile globally. It was just one of several topics the company's chief executive discussed in a PowerPoint presentation covering his three-year strategic plan. But it was practically the only thing the audience of mostly Japanese journalists and financial analysts was interested in asking questions about.

Survey Says

By March, 2010, Ohtsubo is targeting annual revenues of $90 billion, from just over $80 billion now. To reach that level, he has to ramp up overseas operations, and has set a goal of earning 60% of revenues outside of Japan, compared to less than half now. Branding will no doubt play a huge role. "Our brand value remains low," Ohtsubo told journalists in Tokyo via a live video feed from the company's Osaka headquarters.

That's not an easy thing to admit for one of the world's largest consumer electronics makers—and Japan's No. 1 (BusinessWeek.com, 6/30/07). It's also surprising that Panasonic isn't a bigger household name since it's among the top TV makers in the world, and its marque, which first appeared in 1955, is on millions of high-end flat-panel sets consumers buy every year. In last year's annual Interbrand/BusinessWeek survey of the world's best brands, Toyota Motor (TM), Honda Motor (HMC), Sony (SNE), and Canon (CAJ) all were in the top 30. Panasonic was in No. 78.

Though Matsushita officials privately say the name change had been bandied about for years, Ohtsubo was the first to tackle the issue head-on. It wasn't an easy decision, he said. Breaking with the company's past was controversial, even after Matsushita's death in 1989, at the age of 94. Matsushita is revered in Japan as the "god of management." Along with Sony's Akio Morita, he was one of the country's leading entrepreneurs of his generation, and his idea that companies should contribute to the public good and to philanthropy was a big pull for consumers to buy the company's products and for bright young college graduates to apply for jobs. Officials worried that abandoning the Matsushita name would look as if they were tossing out the company's founding principles.

A Split Personality

But there was a big downside to inaction as well: the division of the company's marketing budget.