Juniper Networks brand relaunch: standing out from the crowd

Juniper Networks took a step back a re-evaluated what it stood for

In a sea of blue, grey and white, Juniper Networks has decided to go green.

Not only in the environmental sense, but also for its new logo. And the stand-out colour is just part of what has been a global brand refresh for Juniper Networks this year.

Recognising Juniper needed to stand out in the crowded data networking space, the two-decade old business – a veritable lifetime in data networking—took a step back a re-evaluated what it stood for.

Michael Marcellin, CMO at Juniper Networks, said over the past few years, Juniper has expanded and evolved into new business areas and customer verticals.

“When you expand into new areas, sometimes it’s a challenge to bring it all together and properly articulate why someone should work with Juniper in general,” Marcellin told CMO. “We spent a lot of time talking to customers and sales teams prior to the refresh, and for them it was a question of what the most resonant messages are, and why customers work with Juniper.

“We spent time with the executive team as well, ensuring we are aligned with where the industry is heading into the future. We didn’t want to develop a new brand story that worked only for today, we wanted to look forward and be aspirational and durable.

“It is a noisy space, and our competitors are much larger than us, with much larger marketing megaphones, so we need to ensure our messages are highly relevant and targeted.”

Looking around the market, Juniper  realised all the businesses in the same space had the same coloured logos, making differentiation harder. So it went from blue, grey and white coloured branding, to green. It also changed the tagline to ‘Engineering Simplicity’, which Juniper has since found has a 37 per cent brand recall.

“We ended changing the look and feel of everything we do, but it didn’t start out that way. We did some research online, both qualitative and quantitative, and ended up changing the primary colour the company is associated with,” he said.

“The scientific study of our primary six to eight competitors showed how they were all really centred around a narrow colour palate. We decided we could break out of the pack by leveraging a different colour palate. Now Juniper looks quite different.  

“Everything we do from a marketing perspective is about differentiation and challenging the status quo.”

Juniper also decided to do the launch differently, and rather than having a big relaunch, they held a succession of soft launches instead.

“We didn’t refresh everything to come out with one big bang. Instead, we started to introduce the story of the brand at customer events, and weave it into media events and other events.

“We didn’t want it to be a marketing bang, rather, it was a recommunication of the vision of the company and we wanted to ensure everyone was behind it first. Now, it’s the true north for the entire company. If this was just a marketing tagline without everyone in the company behind it, six months later we’d have to do something else.”

So far, the refresh has been resonating with customers.

“We’re seeing high numbers in terms of relevance of new message, of up in the high 80s and this spans all of our solution areas, and all of our verticals. We’re also seeing 40-50 per cent of unaided awareness in a very crowded market,” Marcellin said.

In the future, Juniper will be increasing its personalisation in the B2B market.

“B2B customers do want a more personalised experience now, and personalised on a few different dimensions now, such as job role, what company, what industry, and how we can deliver simplicity across all of those.

“The marketing tech is remarkable in that way, it’s personalised while not being creepy, so we’ve struck a nice balance with that.”

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