Banking on a Corporate Rebrand

Matthew Jaremski, Kris James Mitchener and Kilian Rieder
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Matthew Jaremski: Department of Economics and Finance, Huntsman School of Business, Utah State University & NBER
Kris James Mitchener: Department of Economics, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, NBER, CEPR, CESifo & CAGE
Kilian Rieder: Economics and Research Department, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Eurosystem) & CEPR. Otto-Wagner Platz 3, 1090 Vienna, Austria

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: Firms often rebrand to counter negative shocks, but can it work? Using a historical natural experiment, we analyse a large sample of companies from the same industry (banking) that shared very similar names, but overwhelmingly decided to change them in response to a common, negative news shock. U.S. entry into World War I in 1917 created a sudden anti-German backlash against anything that invoked an association with the now enemy. The shock itself was thus orthogonal to bank fundamentals and pre-existing trends, but pushed banks to reconsider their brands. After 1917, the few German-named banks that kept their tainted names saw significant declines in assets, deposits, and market share relative to other banks. However, German-named banks that rebranded mitigated much of the negative shock. Specifically, German-named banks that adopted a new non-ethnic brand name avoided between 75% and 85% of the anti-German effect, and those that adopted a new patriotic brand name were able to neutralize it completely. Overall, we find that "crisis rebranding" paid off in our historical setting regardless of the chosen brand, with patriotic rebranding proving the most effective at offsetting the exogenous shock.

Keywords: Corporate brands; brand management; brand equity; news shocks; reputation; World War I; commercial banks; patriotism JEL Classification: D22; G21; L25; M31; N12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cge:wacage:812

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