Does Your Business Need A Rebrand?
No matter what industry you’re in, branding is one of the most effective ways for your company to communicate their value to potential customers. However, a company’s brand is a lot more than just a logo. Branding is all of the visual elements, messaging and even emotions you want your brand to be associated with.
More often than not, a company already has a brand, even if it’s just by accident. If you haven’t really taken a look at how your brand is perceived by others, it might be time for a facelift. While a rebrand may sound a little daunting, the return on investment can be well worth any risks. If you’re considering a rebrand, here are some things you should know and consider before going forward:
What does it mean to rebrand?
A rebrand is like hitting the refresh button on your company’s image. A lot of successful companies go through multiple rebranding campaigns throughout their lifespan. Even small things, like Google recently changing the font of their logo, can revamp your brand’s image and give it an update.
Rebrands come in all different shapes and sizes, from slight logo-tweaks to completely changing their image, website and all identity items associated with the brand name. Depending on the situation, a company may want to even have a complete overhaul of its value proposition, mission and/or marketing direction.
What could happen if you rebrand?
If your rebrand isn’t well thought out and executed, the results may be received poorly by the target audience, especially if it’s already a well-established brand. For example, take the case of the recent Starbucks red cup controversy. Starbucks decided to try something new this year by releasing simple red cups for the holidays, instead of the traditional snowflake adorned cups they’ve had in the past. This rebrand was slight, but a lot of consumers were very unhappy about it.
While it looks like Starbucks is going to be OK, this can sometimes be detrimental to the livelihood of a company. The idea of changing things up and losing customers is so frightening that some companies won’t even consider a rebrand. However if you do it properly, a rebrand can help make customers love your brand even more.
What’s the process of a rebrand?
The first thing you should always do is take a step back to determine if a rebrand is necessary. This step is critical, and involves taking a deep look at where you are as a company and identifying things such as:
- What is our current brand strategy and it is helping us accomplish our goals effectively?
- What does the future of the company and our industry look like? Are we going through any big changes in the coming years?
- Specifically, what elements within the brand (website, social media, blog etc.) are ineffective and how could we improve them?
- As a company, what are our core values and does our current branding effectively support it?
After you’ve put some thought into it, and determined that you need to rebrand, now’s the time to sit down and create a plan of action. You need to determine exactly what you want changed, and how you’re going to start tackling those items one by one.
Depending on how extensive your brand overhaul is, the process could take from a few weeks to a year. For a big company, you might even need to established a specialized team of publicists, marketers and designers dedicated to making the brand successful. A complete brand re-launch certainly is no walk in the park. It takes dedication and many hours of planning and strategizing. However recent case studies show us that in the digital age, more and more companies are jumping on the rebrand bandwagon with success. So long as you’re careful and follow the steps outlined above, your businesses rebrand will be just as successful.
Sydney Brodie is a Junior Associate at Flackable, LLC, a national public relations agency supporting the communications needs of registered investment advisors (RIAs) and other forward-thinking financial services firms. To learn more about Flackable, please visit www.flackable.com.
