Iomega Sets $10-15M For Fall Self-Reinvention

Brandweek, July 3, 2000 by Todd Wasserman

Attempting a much-needed turnaround, Iomega will launch a $1O-15 million branding campaign later this year along with a new logo and some new consumer-focused products as it attempts to position its Clik! drive as the storage medium of choice for MP3 players.

The TV and print campaign, slated for the fourth quarter via Publicis & Hal Riney San Francisco, will attempt to give the data storage drive maker a facelift. Macey-Noyes Associates, Wilton, Conn., handles the company's logo assignment.

Iomega will support the latest positioning of its matchbook-size Clik! drive, which had been geared toward digital cameras with little success, with its own MP3 player, to be launched in the fourth quarter. An ingredient branding campaign like Intel's will follow, among Iomega's handful of MP3 player partners, most notably LG Electronics, said evp-product management/global marketing Mark Lucas. Iomega also is planning its first software product, QuikSync, and FotoShow, an Internet appliance for displaying digital photos.

The Roy, Utah, firm, once a Wall Street darling, has watched its stock price slide from the mid-$20s in 1996 to around $3 now. Analysts abandoned the stock as the company suffered from product shortages and new products, like the Jaz drive and Clik! drives, failed to take off.

Jim Porter, president of researcher Disk/Trend, Mountain View Calif., said while the Clik! repositioning has promise, what Iomega really needs are some new storage-media products. "What they've done is fine-tuned existing product," he said "but the industry would really like to see them come out with something new."