Here are some tips and advice on how to make a start on rebranding and where you need to plan.
Perhaps the hardest thing about rebranding your business, is identifying when it is time to do so. For many businesses this can come too late, but some of the more obvious signs that you need to rebrand are that:
Your vision has changed
Your business has changed
You have/need/want a new target audience
Your market position has dipped
You are struggling to standout
Your brand feels dated or out of touch
Rebranding your business is a huge step at any time, because done badly it can have a damaging effect and can undo years of careful market strategising, or to a lesser extent, doesn’t have the impact that you want.
Here are some tips and advice on how to make a start on rebranding and where you need to plan.
Strategy
Rebranding is not just about tweaking your logo design, it requires a complete strategy because your brand may need a complete overhaul. Essentially you need to study how the business now appears to the market, and how this might have changed. And if an element of it has changed, how can this be reflected in your branding? You need to revisit what you are doing and where you are going, what your business stands for and how you want it to be remembered. This will involve asking yourself some searching questions, where you need to be honest with yourself about where the business is and how it is performing.
Guidelines
When you originally built your brand identity you will have constructed it around some basic guidelines and criteria, such as your history and values, your mission statement, the tone of voice you wanted to adopt, where the logo would be seen and used, colour palettes, fonts and imagery (how and where you use photos and images). You need to revisit these and assess which have changed and what still fits in with what you want your brand to be.
Target market
The key factor in building a brand is how it appears to your target market, so you also need to assess this target market. How has it changed? What is now fashionable in this market? Does your brand still fit into this market? Are you still talking to or connecting with your market? If your target market has changed, how does your brand change to fit into it? As part of this you can also look into what new trends are out there and what you can adopt to stand out in a new target market.
Redesign
While branding involves much more than just a logo and colour palettes, these are the key elements you need to redesign. So sketch out ideas and apply the same criteria as with your first branding exercise; is it transferrable to all formats? Does it match your vision and mission statement? Does it stand out from the competition? Is it unique? And at the same time, is it still you? Does it still reflect your business? You don’t want to lose your market position by not being recognisable and losing what gave people instant recognition. You also need to make sure your new branding is future proof, at least in the medium term, so you don’t face this same situation again in a few years.
Market research
It is essential that any rebranding you carry out is fed through a focus group from your target market first. This can fast-track any concerns before it fully reaches the market and before you have committed to full rebranding investment, so take heed of feedback and advice and make tweaks to your rebrand accordingly.
Release
You need to very carefully plan how a rebrand is released, because it will have different impacts in different sectors. There is a hierarchy of who needs to know in advance about a rebrand and the reasons behind why you are doing it. This can start with partners or the board and will filter down to management and employees. Certainly you need to be very careful about how a rebrand is communicated to customers and the media and other stakeholders, because this can be very damaging if done badly. While you may have had negative reasons for deciding to undergo the rebrand, there are ways to turn this around into positive messaging for the market and the media. However, a rebrand release at this level does need to have impact and there are ways to ensure there is a story behind it and the rebrand is hyped up, to maximise its chances of success.
If you need any help with brand identity or rebranding, I can help you with this process. I have worked with many different industry sectors in branding overhauls and establishing a new brand strategy, so get in touch with me at the Rebus design and branding agency today.