How can Facebook Inc.'s recent rebrand to Meta Platforms Inc. impact the conglomerate in terms of growth?

Meta Platforms Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate that is the parent company of worldwide renowned brands such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Its main source of income comes from “selling advertising space on its various social media platforms”, and in October 2021, it rebranded from Facebook Inc. to Meta Platforms Inc. so as to reflect its “focus on building the metaverse".

This investigation aims to explore and give an answer to how Facebook Inc.'s recent rebrand to Meta Platforms Inc. can impact the conglomerate in terms of growth. Since branding is such a pivotal factor for all businesses nowadays (as it acts as a key differentiating factor that adds value to a firm’s products), a close relationship between the strength of a brand and corporate growth can be expected. For this reason, this topic is worthy of investigation, as it will enable Meta to establish and assess the effect its rebranding decision might have in its future growth prospects, and thus devise future growth strategies accordingly.

This research will be based primarily on theory and tools from Topic 4 Marketing. However, tools from other topics, such as a SWOT analysis and financial ratios, will be also utilized so as to improve the accuracy of the analysis by considering different aspects.

The information used throughout the investigation comes predominantly from the five supporting documents selected. These documents, which include two articles, an interview to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a case study, and the company’s 2021 official annual report, were selected to represent a variety of perspectives and thus reduce the room for bias.

A SWOT Analysis will be applied in the position of Facebook Inc. in October 2021 so as to determine the internal and external factors that were having an influence on prior-to-rebranding Meta’s growth prospects and establish ways in which the company’s future rebranding decision could take advantage of the company’s that time strengths and opportunities while mitigating the impact of its weaknesses and possible threats. The SWOT Analysis is attached in Appendix A.

Through the SWOT Analysis, it can be observed that Facebook’s rebranding decision to Meta can be deemed as a reorientation (weakness-opportunity) strategy, as the company intends to mitigate the impact of its weaknesses, such as high dependency on a single stream of revenue, confusion generated by the names of the apps and the conglomerate, and people regarding the company as only a social media company, while trying to take advantage of growth opportunities, for instance by gaining a first-mover advantage in the promising Metaverse industry. Moreover, the rebranding decision can also be regarded as a defensive (weakness-threat) strategy, as by rebranding, Facebook Inc. is able to limit the impact of threats, such as a declining user of level engagement with its products and its aging user base (by conveying a message that the company is strongly committed to innovate within the technology industry, thus generating hype and trying to target a younger market segment), while also mitigating the effect its weaknesses can have in the medium-to long-term.

A firm’s brand value is an estimate of how much its brand is worth in terms of its reputation, potential income, and market value.3 In this investigation, a brand value analysis for Meta, some years prior to rebranding and few months after rebranding, will be carried out by considering the metric of market capitalization that, although might not be completely precise, it can be used as a simple method to estimate “a company's value by extrapolating what the market thinks it is worth for publicly traded companies”.4 Thus, this technique will enable us to establish previous trends and predict future ones regarding the evolution of Meta’s brand value throughout time, as well as determining whether the rebranding decision affected the company’s brand value in the immediate future. The market capitalization of Meta and its close competitors is attached in Appendix B.

At a first glance, after considering Meta’s market capitalization, one could argue that prior to rebranding, there was an overall positive trend, which means that possibly Meta’s brand value was gradually increasing. This upwards trend peaks in 2020, which can be attributed to the worldwide pandemic Covid-19 that increased online interactions. However, around October 2021, a drastic drop in market capitalization can be noted, and after that, a conspicuous negative trend can be observed. For this reason, it could be argued that after its rebranding decision, the company suffered from a steady decline in market capitalization, and thus, in a certain way, brand value.

Nevertheless, after comparing this trend with Meta’s close competitors, one can notice that Meta’s situation is not a separate case, as all of them suffered from a notorious decline in market capitalization. This suggests that Meta’s drop in market capitalization might not mean a clear decrease in brand value, but rather a trend caused by external factors. Although Meta’s change in market capitalization (- 60.23%) is an astounding drop, Snapchat (-77.81%) and Tencent’s (-41.34%) drop in market capitalization show that this is not a phenomenon seen only in Meta.

In this way, we can state that Meta’s rebranding decision might have led to only a slight, if any at all, exacerbation of the downwards trend observed in the market capitalization of tech companies, as the graphs show that the conglomerate experiences the trends its close competitors are also experiencing. Hence, it can be suggested that, in the middle-to long-term, Meta’s market capitalization will change accordingly to its competitors, and thus, it can be inferred that its brand value has and will not be considerably affected by the company’s rebranding decision.

Similar to the Brand Value Analysis, we can evaluate Meta’s financial performance some years before and few months after rebranding. I will focus on specifically the evolution of Meta’s profitability over time and, to improve the accuracy of the analysis, I will utilize two financial ratios: Gross Profit Margin (GPM) and Net Profit Margin (NPM).

Referring to Appendix C, we can observe that the conclusions drawn from the Brand Value Analysis are reinforced. For instance, immediately after the rebranding (Quarter 4, 2021), the sales revenue kept increasing, to the extent that it got to its maximum level observed. This suggests that the rebranding had no immediate effect whatsoever on Meta’s user base, as otherwise a decrease in sales revenue would have happened. Similarly, notwithstanding Quarter 1, 2022, one can note that the GPM of Meta was barely affected, which suggests that Meta did not have to disproportionately increase its direct costs to increase its sales revenue.

Meta’s NPM also supports this conclusion, as after having peaked in Quarter 4, 2020, it gradually decreased as Covid restrictions were gradually lifted. After the rebranding, we can observe that this declining trend after Quarter 4, 2021, still holds, although one could argue that at a much greater extent for year 2022. However, this can be explained by the increased investment costs and promotional campaigns to develop and strengthen the new brand of the company, Meta Platforms Inc.. Thus, if anything, the company’s rebranding decision has only slightly affected the company’s profitability in the short-term, and is expected to gradually stabilize in the medium-to long-term.

After taking all the supporting documents and the previous analyses into account, we can now construct a “Rebranding: Advantages-Disadvantages Table”. This table is attached in Appendix D, and it shows that, by rebranding, Meta took advantage of several medium-to long-term opportunities that help the company either directly grow, such as by gaining a first-mover advantage in the metaverse industry, or mitigate any factors negatively affecting Meta's future growth prospects, such as extending the business model life cycle, thus procrastinating the discontinuation phase.

The disadvantages, on the other hand, primarily suggest that Meta, notwithstanding the advantages, must be aware of certain negative possibilities of having rebranded. For instance, Meta should be cautious of the fact that the rebranding decision can generate even more confusion, lead to a degraded trust, and be seen as an evasion tactic.

Therefore, by applying all the previous tools, theories, and techniques, we can confidently conclude that Meta’s rebranding decision can positively impact the conglomerate in terms of growth by serving as a reorientation and defensive strategy, taking advantage of medium-to long-term growth opportunities, and mitigating the impact of factors that could possibly take a toll on Meta’s future growth strategies.

Moreover, as observed in the analysis of Meta’s brand value and financial performance, any negative impact of the rebranding decision on the company’s profitability or brand value is expected to be negligible and only in the short-term, which shows that it is anticipated to have barely no direct negative impact on the company in terms of growth. The only caveat would be that the company should be well aware of certain negative effects that the rebranding decision could have, and thus try to devise strategies to avoid or limit the impact these factors may have in its future growth prospects.

Supporting Document N°1 -

Heath, Alex. “Mark Zuckerberg on why Facebook is rebranding to Meta.” TheVerge. October 28, 2021. https://www.theverge.com/22749919/mark-zuckerberg- facebook-meta-company-rebrand.

Supporting Document N°2 -

Meta Platforms, Inc. Annual Report 2021. PDF file. https://www.annreports.com/meta-facebook/meta-facebook-ar-2021.pdf.

Supporting Document N°3 -

Lee Yohn, Denise. “Facebook’s Rebrand Has a Fundamental Problem.” HarvardBusinessReview. November 2, 2021. https://hbr.org/2021/11/facebooks-rebrand-has-a-fundamental-problem.

Supporting Document N°4 -

Kraus, Sascha, et al.. Facebook and the creation of the metaverse: radical business model innovation or incremental innovation?. PDF file. February 23, 2022. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJEBR-12-2021- 0984/full/pdf.

Supporting Document N°5 -

Wertenbroch, Klaus. “Why Facebook Is Rebranding Itself as Meta.” KnowledgeInsead.

January 24, 2022. https://knowledge.insead.edu/marketing/why-facebook- rebranding-itself-meta.

Johnston, Matthew. “How Facebook (Meta) Makes Money.” Investopedia. July 31, 2022. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120114/how-does-facebook- fb-make-money.asp.

Lominé, Loyke, Muchena Martin, A. Pierce, Robert. 2014. The four Ps (product, price, place, promotion). In 2014 Edition: Business Management. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Fernando, Jason. “Market Capitalization: How Is It Calculated and What Does It Tell Investors.” Investopedia. August 10, 2022. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketcapitalization.asp.

The information used for this SWOT Analysis was gathered from primarily the supporting documents. Specific ideas and quotes are explicitly referenced within the SWOT Analysis.

For supporting Document 4, the referenced page numbers refer to the pages of the pdf file.