Plantronics Rebrands to (Partially) Familiar Name

Plantronics, which acquired Polycom last summer, has rebranded as Poly, a decision made after weighing the strengths of the two existing company names.

The rebranding was announced during the start of this week’s Enterprise Connect 2019 conference. The company also is unveiling new products and services.

Poly leverages the “audio and video expertise of Plantronics and Polycom and its breadth of smart endpoints” that connect across and between UC platforms to reduce the “distractions, complexity and distance in the modern workspace,” the company said.

Plantronics previously said the $2 billion acquisition of Polycom positions the company to capture additional opportunities across the nearly $40 billion unified communications and collaboration (UCC) industry. In January, Plantronics debuted its entry into the huddle-room video market with its new plug-and-play video bar, Polycom Studio.

Chris Thorson, Poly’s senior director of product marketing, tells Channel Partners that “while we’re very proud of our past and we don’t want to forget our past, we are something new.”

“And in the hopes and thought of being a new company, we started to think about the many different markets that we serve, the many different ways that our customers connect with one another to solve the problems that they have, the many different platforms that we need to connect with to make it all work, and all the different choices that our customers have,” he said. “And with that as the backdrop, we’ve decided that the new name for this combined company will be simply Poly, meaning many.”

The rebrand should help partners because they’ve been “fighting with two different brands and two different companies, and how do I bring these messages together and what do I lead with, and what do I call things and how do these products start to work together,” Thorson said.

Poly’s Chris Thorson

“From a marketing standpoint, you’ll see a unified front, you’ll see greater air cover than you’ve seen before; and then from a product front, you’re going to see products really starting to work together and really being positioned as one company versus multiple ones,” he said. “So streamlining your marketing, streamlining your operations and streamlining your portfolio is really the message to the partners out there.”

Partners did play a role in deciding the new name, but they most likely weren’t aware of it, Thorson said.

“We did sent out a quite extensive survey, and it did cover our customers and partners, and internal folks, so we got a very broad perspective,” he said. “We got feedback where you would rank brands, where you would rank attributes, but you wouldn’t necessarily know which brand you’re talking about. But we were trying to get an inkling for what’s the strength of our brand in relation to our competition out there, what brands these were in relation to one another – Polycom and Plantronics – so taking all that information into account, we said it’s probably better to start a new brand going forward.”

Looking ahead, Poly will continue to invest in technology leadership in audio and video, and mobility, Thorson said. It also will invest in …

… its core business, focus more on the huddle room space, invest in AI and software, and automation, and continue expanding its partner ecosystem, he said.

“Today feels like my first day as CEO of a new company,” said Joe Burton, Poly’s president and CEO. “We see limitless opportunity for how people communicate and collaborate today. With advancements in AI, machine learning and new technologies, we see a future where Poly makes the connection, then quietly steps out of the way to become the one thing you don’t notice in the meeting.”

Among the new products and services unveiled are: