FabianAt the beginning of July, Signify, the manufacturer of Philips Hue, announced its partnership with the Mercedes Formula 1 team. At least in sporting terms, things have been going more than brilliantly since then, with two victories after a long dry spell. But what exactly does Signify want to achieve with the partnership?
“We want to reinforce Signify as a company name”, says Eric Rondolat, CEO of Signify, when announcing the quarterly figures. The main focus here is on consumers, although in this respect it is surprising that ‘Philips Hue’ was not stuck on the Mercedes racers.
We want to strengthen Signify also as a brand name, already some activities that we have are weighing the Signify brand and we think it’s very important for a company like ours also to own our brand. We have a very specific part of the objective of this partnership, which is called elevating experiences, which is what we do on the trial because we are lighting also some Formula One tracks like Las Vegas and Singapore, but it’s so elevating experiences of fans at home.
Philips as a brand name will not disappear
Will we soon no longer be talking about Philips Hue, but just Signify? That’s unlikely to happen any time soon, even if it hasn’t officially been Philips for a long time. “No, I think we’re not talking about dropping the Philips brand name. This is our historical brand. And now we also need to be conscious that we are having a brand licence fee that we need to pay for the Philips brand. So that will continue for the future”, says Rondolat. “Keeping Philips where it really adds value is fundamental for us, and that will continue.”
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“Signify” is a stupid name and the company will always be “Philips Lighting” to me. The day they remove “Philips” from their products is the day I stop buying those products.
They seem to be replacing the Philips logo on their products with a Hue logo. Probably in preparation for them dropping the Philips brand entirely.
This F1 thing seems like they are starting to establish the Signify brand in preparation for adding it in place of the Philips brand once they drop it.