Things to Consider When Thinking About a Rebrand

The idea of rebranding your business can be an exciting one, but also a terrifying one! What if potential customers don’t recognize you anymore or lose faith in your services? What if it creates brand confusion in your industry? Or what if your current employees don’t buy in to the new brand as an organization they want to be a part of?

While these are all things to keep in mind, most times a rebrand (done right) will do way more good than harm.

Before we talk about things to consider let’s chat about the different types of rebrand a company can go through.

• A Brand Refresh – this is exactly what it sounds like, a refresh vs a re-do. Usually in these instances a company wants to keep their name, logo, and main colors in-tact but desires a bit of a facelift for marketing materials to modernize the brand. This can also include an update of brand messaging to be more clearly understood by the desired audience, but the core concept of the business and their mission remain the same.
• A Traditional Rebrand – A bit more involved, this type of rebrand usually incorporates a completely new or drastic change to the logo and all LTF (Look/Tone/Feel) elements of the brand. More often than not, brand messaging, mission statements or core values are visited and changed in this process as well to ensure cohesion throughout the brand. This is a large undertaking but is great for companies who have been around a long time and need to revamp their identity to reflect who they are today vs. who they were when the company started (a lot can change in 100 years!) or for companies who have had a fair amount of change in their initial service offerings and need to tweak the name or logo to embody that.
• New Name Who This – This is the most intense type of rebrand and is usually reserved for a company that needs to completely change their name due to a total change in service offerings, bad press, or in the case of a merger or acquisition. Along with a new name usually comes a new logo, color palate, messaging, and web address – basically an entirely new identity.

So what are the things an organization should consider before undergoing any type of brand update?

Is the organization being held back by the current visual brand or brand message? Meaning, will an update to the brand change the public perception of the company and allow them to expand their audience base, geographical footprint, and market share? If you’re a company that promotes tech as one of your core differentiators but you’re pushing a logo from 1940 or a website from 2005, you might have a hard time finding a foothold with new customers until you make a change.

Will this cause brand confusion about what the company currently offers or cause the company to be confused with another company? Very few companies find their success by actively being confused for another company. While certain things like aligning colors to industry norms can be beneficial (think the reds, greens, and yellows of most construction companies) aligning too closely on brand elements (or going too out there for the industry) can actually do more harm and create brand confusion – which best case creates annoying conversations for your sales team, and worst case means a split customer base and lost revenue potential.

Will the new brand alienate current customers? This one is more about how the rebrand is done but think about the values / what would engage your current audience (if that’s the audience you want to keep and grow). If your core audience is individuals 65+ going super modern with a logo, a tech-savvy website, or only using imagery of 20-somethings isn’t going to resonate. This doesn’t mean not to do it, it just means to think about the implications before getting too excited about that super abstract logo design.

What are the cost implications? While degrees will vary, any type of rebrand will require an update to both public facing and internal marketing materials, which means labor and cash. Think about every item that will have to be updated and replaced given the level of rebrand you’re considering. On a small scale this may be a new face for your website, a couple printables, and business cards, but on a large scale this could mean new building signage (exterior and interior) and printed materials for 10’s or hundreds of offices/locations, new uniforms or swag for every employee, new advertising and video assets, etc. Aside from pure capital investment, a lot of man hours are required for such an undertaking, so be sure your internal team has the bandwidth to take on a project of this magnitude and see it through.

How will you measure success at the end of this? If there is no quantifiable measure of success come the end of the re-brand, it may be hard to not only get internal buy in on the project, but also to give direction to your marketing team or partner. The end result should drive the efforts of the rebrand, so if you can’t put your finger on what success would look like (be it increased revenue in a certain segment, more leads for a specific offering, etc) you might want to give the concept a second thought.

At the end of the day, rebranding a company is not something that should be taken lightly or entered into on gut feel alone, however, if the positives (and business goals) support it, it can be an exhilarating undertaking and just the thing to push an organization to the next level of success!