In 2009, Global Refund had impressive market share, but little recognition. Jade Gamlin investigates how the company created a resonant brand in the tax refund industry

Global Blue, formerly Global Refund, was a pioneer in the tax refund industry when it started out over 30 years ago. The service, which offers travellers a refund on the tax they pay on foreign high streets, was quickly under attack from competitors and, while holding an impressive 85% market share, the industry was rapidly becoming a commodity.

In a bid to protect its market share, Global Blue knew it needed to build a strong brand that attracted new customers, as opposed to convincing its old ones to return. Back in 2009, the company approached Goosebumps brand consultancy to help iron out some communications issues in order to improve relations with merchants and ultimately confront the competition.

The first step was to create a brand which supported Global Blue’s business strategy, which had historically communicated with a business to business audience. While expansion into the corporate sector was within reach, sparking up a conversation with consumers presented a number of hurdles.

Arjen Kruger, executive vice-president and chief marketing officer Global Blue says: “When you make a brand change you need to have a high level of confidence that is future-proof.” Continuing to appeal to an ever-evolving worldwide audience was undoubtedly a sizeable challenge for the company, as was anticipating how the brand might unfold in the future.

“The most difficult challenge is future proofing the business world. The world at large should resonate with well established retailers just as well as it would communicate with countries like China, Japan or Brazil,” Kruger says. “There was a lot of crystal ball decision making as a result of merging markets.” Kruger brought in Goosebumps to embark upon what was initially a relatively open brief. However once Simon Cotterrell, strategic partner at Goosebumps, and his team embarked upon research in a series of meetings with Global Blue directors and managers, the scale of the project became apparent.

Cotterrell says: “We were brought in under his [Kruger’s] stewardship and worked with people across the business. This is where the scale of the rebrand came into play - we really had the opportunity to work with everyone.”

Questions of how new products could be brought to market soon escalated into wider issues across numerous sectors. “We very quickly found ourselves to be the sounding board for all sorts of problems. The stuff they had was all archaic” Cotterrell says. “It really cascaded from marketing across all sectors and opened up the doors to a new level of challenges.”

Following research and confrontation of the challenges suppressing the company, Goosebumps submitted their proposal to Global Blue, making it very clear that a viable, alternative option was available to them. Cotterrell says: “We explained how the business was a victim of its own brand. It had a very strong offer but the company name led merchants in only one direction – tax refund – and there was the opportunity to offer a lot more than that.”

The key was in the name. Goosebumps understood losing the word “refund” would bring down psychological barriers and allow Global Blue to the business. This is where the scale of the rebrand came into play - we really had the opportunity to work with everyone.”

Questions of how new products could be brought to market soon escalated into wider issues across numerous sectors. “We very quickly found ourselves to be the sounding board for all sorts of problems. The stuff they had was all archaic” Cotterrell says. “It really cascaded from marketing across all sectors and opened up the doors to a new level of challenges.”

Following research and confrontation of the challenges suppressing the company, Goosebumps submitted their proposal to Global Blue, making it very clear that a viable, alternative option was available to them. Cotterrell says: “We explained how the business was a victim of its own brand. It had a very strong offer but the company name led merchants in only one direction – tax refund – and there was the opportunity to offer a lot more than that.”

The key was in the name. Goosebumps understood losing the word “refund” would bring down psychological barriers and allow Global Blue to position itself as a multi-product company.

Kruger did not initially support the change, which brought with it the problem of sourcing a title with international appeal. He says: “It was such a big challenge to come up with a stable name which did so many things. It needed to be easy to understand by a number of speakers. It became difficult to decide on a global name.” The lengthy and complicated process was soon brought to an end when, in a turn of events, the team reverted to keeping things simple. They began to pull out what aspects truly represented the company, and colour became a vital contender. Kruger says: “Many people said as a colour, the company is blue - it is international, it is free, it is strong, and all these things together helped us decide on the brand.”

The name Global Blue was decided on in February 2010. The universal title granted the freedom to build valuable and lasting relationships with travellers across the globe while paying homage to the company’s heritage. Cotterrell says: “We were trying to make something very international. It’s not a beautiful name, but worldwide people are going to know colours and numbers.”

The next process was to extend the name and its symbolism across the brand’s collateral, and the question of the logo was of ultimate importance. Global Blue already owned the Tax Free Shopping icon, a famous symbol which undoubtedly represented the service; however it did not link travellers to the company behind it.

“The most obvious thing was the fact they had one of the most recognised icons in the world – the tax pay symbol. It’s up there with the Kitemark or the DVD mark; a symbol which was totally and utterly unbranded,” says Cotterrell. “The real trick was taking the synonymous icon and turning it into a famous icon.”

While embarking on research, Goosebumps identified five designs which were apt across the major markets, but none compared to the symbol of the star. Cotterrell says: “In some nationalities it has religious connotations, but in all cases it was a symbol of optimism and forwardness.”

The logo itself, ‘The Journey’, features a number of lines to represent the flight paths travellers make as they move around the world. The interlinking, unsymmetrical lines were designed to present the ease with which Global Blue connects with customers and merchants, while connoting that travel experiences never follow a predictable pattern. It’s symbolic, but Cotterrell admits the design is neither beautiful nor award-winning, due to the need to keep it simple and perceptible to a number of nationalities.

The crux was trying to persuade a vast audience that the symbol, which had been in place for over 30 years, had changed its name and visual identity. Global Blue, until this point, had existed as a business to business brand, and needed to convince the confused consumer audience that it was not a government-led initiative. Cotterrell says: “We put some research together which showed that people, particularly the nouveau riche, the Russians and the Chinese for example, are a lot more sceptical, so putting a business behind the logo could be a big positive.”

Extending the new visual identity across all brand collateral was the next challenge, and was an effective tool in deploying Global Blue’s brand strategy. “It gave the opportunity to create an umbrella across the two spaces – a way to bring the two sectors together,” says Kruger.

In a bid to embody the colour blue, the new visuals were incorporated in mass saturation across all company collateral. With over 100,000,000 traveller touch points, placing the new brand in retailers’ windows was a vital step. “We got the stickers rolled out really quickly,” Cotterrell says. “Before we had 300,000 stickers unbranded, and overnight 300,000 branded.” On top of this there were the 250 airport kiosks to rebrand and changing the vast amounts of hardware in a period of 12 months was no mean feat.

Together, Goosebumps and Global Blue generated tailored literature for the two audiences: for consumers the SHOP magazine, and for merchants the corporate brochure.

SHOP, compiled by Global Blue’s communications team, was launched in 2011, where 3.8 million magazines, in 90 editions, were sent to 28 different countries. The magazine provides comprehensive information on where to shop, retailer locations, key trends, and how to save money by shopping Tax Free.

The seasonal magazine is translated into key languages and has a targeted distribution ensuring maximum impact with international shoppers.

The corporate brochure acts as a definition of Global Blue’s strategy, communicating to merchants that travellers, or “Globe Shoppers,” are the most important customers in the world. Cotterrell and his team introduced the brand essence of “Globe shoppers’ best friend” to the brochure, a pun designed to appeal to merchants while offering a precise definition of their audience. “Overall; it was an internal essence for the brand and what we do as a company. We are there alongside helping them pre-plan their shopping experience,” Cotterrell says. “That resonated very simply in the organisation –it’s multicultural and the simple line is very directional for them.”

To prove to merchants that international shoppers were their key market, a new initiative, the Globe Shopper City Index, was created in collaboration with the Economist Intelligence Unit (ERU). The programme ranked the attractiveness of 33 major European cities for travel shopping, in which London achieved first place.

Need to see more imagery from the Global Blue rebrand? Check out the Global Blue Brand:Rebrand Pinterest board

It was clear to Cotterrell the information they needed to convey. “Luxury brands should be aiming for 50% of their sales to come from foreign nationals. In China, with its increasing wealth and Gross Decimal Product, the middle classes are rising. As they enter into the middle classes, the more they travel. They spend loads more, they travel loads more, and, outside America, China is the biggest shopping nation.”

Another key factor in the rebrand, the website, was originally launched with two sides, business to business and business to consumer, two years ago. Global Blue commissioned Story Worldwide to create the first generation of the website back then, however today they benefit from their own CMS team.

The key,in both circumstances was to reach out to the ever expanding audience. Cotterrell says: “We wanted to create very simple messages as English is not the entire audience’s first language. So we communicated the message: ‘Shop the world’ to travellers and ‘Track the world’ to merchants.”

The new brand was first shown to internal stakeholders, at a conference in Spain. The new visual identity was kept a secret from the majority of Global Blue, with only its board members knowing what was about to unfold.

In the morning, the conference hall was decorated with Global Blue’s original branding, and Kruger proceeded to tell employees that the visuals needed to change and appeal to the consumer audience. Following a break, the audience returned to the room to find it adorned with the new branding, complete with the new books, literature and collateral. Once the entire company was informed and excited about the fresh brand,the launch began, and positive results followed.

In the first year of the rebrand, Global Blue saw its biggest ever revenue increase, which doubled in the second year with 98% year on year growth - the best year they have had in 30 years of business. Its market valuation has reached €1 billion; a threefold increase in market value since the new identity was launched.

Cotterrell was quick to recognise Global Blue’s potential: “They really had a brand waiting to happen but they never looked at it this way.” As a result of the rebrand, the company gained a huge amount of coverage, and it was recognised by Burson-Marsteller as one of the biggest PR drives ever. Today, Global Blue is an internationally recognised brand, seen on high streets all over the world.