DCL - When brands go bad!
by adminMauritius is currently going through a branding exercise that should improve its image as a country. This means that the reengineered Mauritian brand should be an umbrella brand that will be a reflection of the country’s different economic sectors (tourism, textile, ICT, finance, agriculture, etc.), politics, society, culture, history, among others.
As branding is becoming the buzzword, some Mauritian companies went through a ‘supposedly’ brand reengineering exercise recently (some also call a ‘re-branding’). However, in the true state of things, the majority of those companies just went through a brand refreshment, i.e. re-actualizing their corporate identity and redesigning the way they present themselves. Brand refreshments are carried out when companies feel they are running out of brand ideas. They feel the urge to look modern and fresh from fear of becoming obsolete.
One such company is DCL (Data Communication Ltd). In 2008, it went through a brand refreshment exercise, changing its logo, tag-line, website and communication artworks. The brand idea remained the same - ICT products and services provider, while its brand message became quite grandiose.
Refreshed Logo:
New TV AD:
New Print Communication Artwork
New Website - www.dcl.mu or www.dclweb.org
There was a fair bit of media & billboard campaigning with the refreshed DCL brand and it even won the best stand award for Infotech 2008.
However the genuineness and authenticity of this refreshed brand is now being questioned since a gross act of plagiarism and copyright infringement has been discovered on the DCL website (www.dcl.mu or www.dclweb.org). Text content on the ‘Our Ethics’ section and the ‘Careers’ section of the DCL website were copied from various sections of Unisys’ website, an American company that operates on the international level - www.unisys.com.
DCL copied the text and made minor changes to a few words in a couple of sentences, and replaced ‘Unisys’ with ‘DCL’. However, in one sentence, they forgot to replace ‘Unisys’, and to date, this sentence is still present on the DCL website (This ‘mistake’ is highlighted further below).
The texts content that were copied for the ethics section:
DCL - About Us / Our Ethics - http://www.dcl.mu/about_us/
The above text was copied from: UNISYS - Careers / Who We Are / Ethics - http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/careers/ethics.htm
The texts content that were copied for the careers section:
DCL - Careers - http://www.dcl.mu/careers/
The above text was copied from: UNISYS - Careers / career opportunities - http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/careers/career__opportunities.htm
http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/careers/growth__and__development/index.htm
While DCL was busy copying the text from the Unisys website, they forgot to replace ‘Unisys’ with ‘DCL’ in one sentence:
DCL - Careers - http://www.dcl.mu/careers/
DCL’s act of plagiarism and copyright infringement is quite severe in legal and business ethics terms. It demonstrates a lack of moral code from DCL. What is even more shameful is that the text that is supposed to represent their ethics was stolen from another brand. For a company that boasts about being ‘Driven By Innovation’, ripping the text off another company and passing it as their own is not a very innovative thing to do. This also makes us doubt the authenticity of the DCL brand, its organization, leadership, products and services. Such business practices convince people to lose their trust in a company and its brand.
Worst of all, companies that have such a mindset are bringing a highly negative contribution to the reputation of the ICT sector of Mauritius. As the national branding exercise for Mauritius has started, it is becoming clear that the brand that will be generated will take into consideration various aspects of the country, including its ICT sector.
‘Le branding devrait permettre de montrer plusieurs atouts de Maurice : un secteur des technologies de l’information et de la communication en puissance,…’ (Lexpress - 14 October 2008 - Illustrer les atouts du pont entre Afrique et Asie - by Roshan Seetohul).
If the international community is made aware of DCL’s practices, it will most probably have a negative impact on the reputation of Mauritius as a whole.
For a company that just went through a brand refreshment exercise, DCL has shifted away from being a mediocre brand to being an untrustworthy and unauthentic brand that steals copyright material from other companies. The market should ask themselves that if DCL is indulging in such malpractices at this surface level, what could it be doing behind the curtains? A brand’s reputation resides on its actions and values. Grabbing copyright text from the Unisys website to put on its own website gives DCL the ‘Bad Brand’ label.
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