‘Building a racing car while driving at 100mph’: Haleon on two years of brand building
A lot has happened in the two years since GSK Consumer Healthcare rebranded as Haleon, requiring resilience and quick thinking from the marketing team.
Two years ago this month, global consumer healthcare firm Haleon made its UK stock market debut following a high profile split from pharma giant GSK.
Creating a new brand from scratch was no mean feat. The business embarked on 11 months of rigorous testing, working with branding agency Interbrand to sift through and share 2,000 potential names with colleagues, consumers and healthcare professionals. The company eventually settled on Haleon, a mixture of the word ‘hale’, meaning in good health, and ‘leon’, which is associated with strength.
Going to market with a new identity was just the start of the journey, explains CMO Tamara Rogers. Likening the process to “building a racing car while driving at 100mph”, she credits the “great resilience” shown by her team over the past two years, a period characterised by intense geo-political upheaval, crippling high inflation and a “step change in pace” within marketing.
