Company logos and traditional packaging are no longer considered sacred cows as several major names have had face-lifts this year to refresh their images in the minds of the customers and to appeal to younger purchasers or clients in overseas markets.

　　This is one of the topics that more than 40 senior executives from leading international and domestic firms are set to discuss in a gathering starting tomorrow in Shanghai.

　　The two-day PR & Branding Forum 2003 has drawn marketing specialists from Bristol-Myers Squibb, Siemens, Oglivy and homegrown Little Swan Group. Tom Doctoroff, chief executive officer of J. Walter Thompson-Bridge Advertising Co Ltd, will deliver a keynote speech.

　　The giants of fast-moving consumer goods have regularly revamped their logos and redesigned new packaging as part of their marketing strategies.

　　Watsons Water, owned by Hutchison Whampoa Ltd, for example, has been offering its distilled water in bottles with cup-embedded lids since the middle of June. The bottles have verdant green areas.

　　"It is one of the biggest changes in the century-long history of Watsons Water," said Daniel Wong, its general manager. "The new design can help our product stand out from its peers and make it more related with our customers. Most of our cus-tomers are fashion-sensitive white-collar workers."

　　Watsons Water will boost this campaign with a 100-million-yuan (US.1 million) advertising budget.

　　Such spending sounds huge, but it is easily dwarfed when compared with Coca-Cola's face-lift in February. The soft drink giant said it planned to spend 500 million yuan to promote its new packages with enhanced background color and new Chinese fonts - the first change since it reentered the Chinese market in 1979.

　　Company officials claimed its market share has gained in past two months since it took on the new look, but declined to reveal actual figures.

　　Wall's, the world's leading ice-cream manufacturer, replaced its previous white trademark with a hot scarlet heart-shaped one and spent 150 million yuan in domestic advertising.

　　"Companies change their brand names and logos to fit their sales strategy," said Margaret Yin, business development manager from McCann Erickson Guang-ming Advertising Co Ltd.

　　"Coca-Cola, for example, redesigned its logo to further consolidate its impression among customers as a byword for an energetic and young lifestyle," Yin said.

　　In contrast, domestic firms tend to be more conservative, said Roger Shieh, managing director of Enterprise IG China.

　　"Sometimes they should think about this," Shieh said. "Multinational companies often adopt such move to draw attention from custo-mers and media so that they would know more about their brandnames and products."