Summary
Comdata can grow quickly with its new master brand strategy by building/ leveraging its brand on a foundation based upon Comdata's customer performance, global/ local presence and its personality or customer experience. Doing so will allow for innovative strategies for growth through focus or diversification.
It is to early to tell where Comdata is going with their campaign. To be caught in the middle of focus or diversification can cause for poor results for Comdata, its customers and Ceridian.
Analysis
Strong brands come in two varieties: focused and diversified. Focused brands succeed by owning a category, driving its development, and dominating sales channels and geographies. Clearly Comdata has the ability to build upon their global dominance of the current category/industry portfolio.
Diversified brands rely on a golden thread that ties together the company’s various businesses, reinforcing the brand's experience and ensuring that customers always experience Comdata in a consistent way. Companies stuck in the middle should evaluate their options at both ends of the spectrum.
The hope I have for Comdata is that they choose a focused campaign and allow Ceridian to manage a diversified brand strategy. Leverage the common thread that has made Ceridian such a great company and long-term investment which is focus will serve Comdata well. Ceredian came to be from a focused spin-off of Control Data in the early '90's.
The take-away
It would appear that Comdata is moving into the focused brands space and must leverage differently its capabilities than that of a diversified business it has been. To succeed with strategy, however, Comdata must develop the right support capabilities and put the appropriate metrics in place to track the building of the desired image. As we watch Comdata roll out its branding campaign we should be able to determine its growth prospects at it evolves.
