Sean Nero

Re­brand­ing the Neal and Massy Group of Com­pa­nies to Massy Group was not easy but the con­glom­er­ate's vi­sion for the fu­ture re­quired that the brand be over­hauled, Group CEO Ger­vase Warn­er said.

He said the de­ci­sion was dif­fi­cult be­cause over the past nine decades Neal and Massy had be­came a house­hold name, not on­ly in T&T, but the Caribbean and parts of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca.

"We want­ed to make sure that what­ev­er we came up with rep­re­sent­ed growth–busi­ness­es that worked and grow to­geth­er. We al­so want­ed pros­per­i­ty, good eco­nom­ic, as well as com­mu­ni­ty pros­per­i­ty to be in­cor­po­rat­ed in this process and of course, we want­ed it to be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Caribbean basin.

"We want­ed it to be a brand that peo­ple would look at and say this thing looks friend­ly, warm and every­thing Caribbean. So we did that," he said.

"We start­ed to search for dif­fer­ent names that would em­body the man­i­festo that we put out be­fore. Af­ter all the brain­storm­ing, we just kept com­ing back to Massy. Massy was a strong name. Peo­ple al­ready ab­bre­vi­ate Neal and Massy to Massy. They are go­ing Massy. They (are) tak­ing their car Massy. Massy is a strong name, a name that trans­lates well on the Latin Amer­i­can mar­ket that we would go in­to. Mass is more, si is yes. You want more? Yes! So we went with Massy."

As a re­sult of the re­brand­ing, the group's mega su­per­mar­ket chain Hi-Lo is is now Massy Stores, the au­to­mo­tive di­vi­sion will now be known as Massy Mo­tors, while Il­lu­mi­nat, the in­for­ma­tion and tech­nol­o­gy arm of the com­pa­ny, is now Massy Tech­nolo­gies. The in­te­grat­ed struc­ture was in­tend­ed to treat with the busi­ness to busi­ness dy­nam­ic of the group's op­er­a­tions.

Warn­er said the pre­vi­ous mod­el, there was a clear dis­con­nect be­tween the group's 10,000 em­ploy­ees work­ing across 60 com­pa­nies with dif­fer­ent names, even though some con­duct­ed sim­i­lar busi­ness­es. He not even the pub­lic knew the com­pa­nies, so they searched else­where for ser­vices which they could have eas­i­ly ac­cessed with­in the fam­i­ly of busi­ness­es. Be­cause of this, there was a need to im­prove how the com­pa­ny in­ter­faced with its pub­lic, he said.

Warn­er said for­mer group CEO Syd­ney Knox chal­lenged the move when con­sult­ed on the mat­ter. He feit it was a "ter­ri­ble" idea and de­clared that un­der no cir­cum­stances should the lega­cy of Har­ry Neal be al­lowed to die in the com­pa­ny's new vi­sion.

In 1932, Neal En­gi­neer­ing, led by Har­ry Neal, merged with and Massy Ltd head­ed by Charles Massy to es­tab­lish the com­pa­ny. Knox ar­gued that Neal and Massy was firm­ly po­si­tioned as more than just a name in T&T and was firm­ly etched as part of the coun­try's her­itage.

Warn­er said the project team took the for­mer ex­ec­u­tive's ad­vice and re­turned to the draw­ing board and in­cor­po­rat­ed the word in the lo­go in an ef­fort to pre­serve the lega­cy. That's when Knox gave his bless­ings.

"While a lot of time was spent on strat­e­gy it was soon re­alised that not much time was spent on iden­ti­ty. In emerg­ing mar­kets the best per­form­ing group like the Tata Group in In­dia, pays at­ten­tion to both strat­e­gy and iden­ti­ty. If you look at con­glom­er­ate out of Japan, like Mit­subishi who were do a lot of work with all of their com­pa­nies car­ry the Mit­subishi name," Warn­er said

"It turns out we sell ve­hi­cles. When you buy a ve­hi­cle, you need in­sur­ance, you fi­nance. We have a com­pa­ny called Unit­ed In­sur­ance. We have a com­pa­ny called Gen­er­al Fi­nance Cor­po­ra­tion. Do you think of­fi­cial are talk­ing to one an­oth­er? Now they are.

"It's on­ly re­cent­ly that we start­ed to sell mo­tor in­sur­ance in T&T. Fun­ny thing (is) Unit­ed In­sur­ance sells in­sur­ance every­where else in the Caribbean ex­cept the place where Massy Group of Com­pa­nies has the num­ber one car deal­er­ship. It's clear­ly an op­por­tu­ni­ty to sim­pli­fy the ex­pe­ri­ence of buy­ing a car in­side the Massy Group."