Rebranding
We’ll help you rebrand your business.
Large or small, startup or established, commercial or non-profit, a successful rebranding project should deliver significant benefits.
Breathe new life into your business by rebranding.
Your rebranding project has to start with a focus on strategy, a clear process, creative vision, and most of all, a list of reasons why.
There are a few misconceptions about branding, the biggest one being that a logo is a brand and vice versa.
A logo or visual identity is just a small part of the overall branding of your business or product. It’s often the most recognisable device used to communicate with target audiences; this sometimes means that a logo is often the only element that a lot of businesses concentrate on when rebranding.
A brand is the sum of all of the touch-points that come into contact with current or potential customers. These touch-points include the logo, stationery, marketing material and websites, business premises, vehicles and even how your staff communicate with your customer base. In short, your brand is the much bigger picture, but the logo is on the front line.
There are many reasons to rebrand, some of which are outlined below.
Thinking about rebranding?
There’s a lot to consider when rebranding a company, product or service and we can help best when we’re involved at the start of the process.
Rebranding isn’t just about redesigning the logo – it can take in every aspect of your business, from your advertising to your website.
The exploration and planning stages of a rebranding project as just as important as the design work, so we’ll help you with everything.
These stages will involve different amounts of input depending on the size of your business and where you are on your journey, but they should not be skipped over in a race to see what the rebrand will look like.
We know we can help the most when involved from the beginning, so talk to us today and we will advise you the next steps, which may be a bespoke workshop to establish the specific needs or just a chat about your creative needs.
Making things measurable.
As we’ve mentioned, a successful rebrand should have a positive impact on your business.
This might be better stakeholder engagement, a larger social reach or more sales, but it’s important to plan for how this ‘success’ is going to be measured.
Without some form of benchmark for improvement, a rebrand can quickly become just a cosmetic exercise, leaving you wondering if it’s had any impact at all.
10 Reasons to consider a rebranding exercise.
1. A merger or take-over of a company or organisation
This could mean a new name, a new logo, and a re-evaluation of all brand materials. This is where the benefits of using a full-service design agency are important – they can help you manage the whole project.
2. A period of considerable growth
Not just financial growth; expansion into new markets may mean your business may outgrow its current branding and therefore be missing opportunities to connect with new markets.
3. Moving with the times
Your current branding may have become outdated and not reflect your business as it is now. It may be that when you started the business, finances were tight so a logo was produced cheaply and quickly to “make do” but now it just doesn’t suit your business or allow your business room to grow.
4. A change in company strategy
Target audiences, positioning and market share can all change during a product or companies lifecycle. What was once highly effective may now hold your company back, which means it’s branding needs to be updated to reach new target audiences. If you find yourself in this position, a brand audit may prove a worthwhile exercise.
5. Reflecting a change in the type of products that you sell
It could be that when starting out, your business offered a particular type of product or service and a brand was built around that, even its name might reflect this. But as your business grows, its product line and aspirations can grow too, which means its branding may need to be revisited to reflect these changes.
6. To differentiate a business from other competitors
Sometimes the branding of your business can look very similar to that of a close competitor, so your potential customers may struggle to tell the difference. A business may consider a rebranding project in order to reinforce individuality and communicate why it’s different from its competitors and gain a greater market share.
7. Technological advances
Advances in technology may mean that your business operates in a very different way when it first set out. For example, you may have become more of an online business, this can affect the brand and how it is perceived. You might want to consider animating your logo or simplifying it for use on your website designs and across social media.
8. Connecting with new audiences
Your product or services audience will change over time. A rebranding exercise can help you to reach out and connect with new customers. This might not mean a change of logo and creative, it might be more strategic, looking at your core values, messages and how you communicate.
9. Creative challenges
Slack recently rebranded due to their old logo causing issues when it was used across different media. This is a good example of a rebrand to make your branding more consistent and easy to use.
10. Boosting your bottom line
The key benefit of any rebranding project should be to boost your bottom line. Reviving a waining brand can have a huge benefit to your profit. The amount of difference you want to create should also be considered in the budget you have for the project.
If any of the above sound familiar then you might want to consider a rebrand. If so, there are a few things that you should consider….
- Why are you thinking about rebranding?
- What scale of rebranding are you considering?
- What changes (if any) have happened at your business recently that may affect your rebranding?
- Have you compiled any research? Looking at, your competitors, the market that your business operates in, target audiences and technological advances, all of which may affect your business now and in the future.
We would never advocate “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”, a rebrand doesn’t have to be a complete overhaul of the whole company image, it should be driven by the needs for a rebrand.
A rebrand could be as simple as developing a new strapline for the business, or it could be a revamp of the logo, keeping some familiar styling that customers associate with the brand.
It may be a larger project involving a change of name, logo and involving all marketing material online and offline. The key is to plan, research and consider a number of factors including at the very least what will your customers think of a rebrand, the benefits of rebranding can be pretty considerable if carried out with diligence and care.
