How to successfully rebrand

Creative Design Article

Why rebrand?

Rebranding can be a big undertaking for businesses, but a fresh approach and a new look can excite and re-engage customers while helping you reach new audiences. Rebranding is a natural part of a company’s evolution; priorities, tastes and outlooks all change as your business grows and these changes need to be reflected in your brand.

There could be a variety of reasons why you’re looking to rebrand. When starting a business your first priority may have been getting launched and branding may have fallen down the list of priorities. There may not have been any money put into the branding process, at least not in a focussed way. Many businesses are guilty of creating a basic logo for their brand and thinking that's the hard work over with when in reality it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Just like an Iceberg - what you visibly see of a brand is just the tip, most of what makes up a complete brand isn’t tangibly visible. Even though sometimes it's the most recognisable and celebrated element of a brand, a logo is not a brand - it is a symbol of a brand.

Your brand as a whole is all about perception, what people think and what you might want them to think. Afterall brands are the perception of value in the mind of the customer. The following article outlines a few of the areas where you should prioritise your efforts when undertaking a rebrand.

To come out with a rebrand that hits the mark, you need to know what you’re doing resonates with your customers and fits with the market as a whole. Thorough research will give you insight into the way your customers experience your brand.

It’s always worth investigating what the market is doing. Are there any new trends in branding? Take a close look at the competition too. Is there a new company on the scene offering products and services similar to yours? Study what’s working for them as well as other competitors and see if there are any commonalities there to influence your rebrand.

Create an authentic brand voice

Your brand’s personality is central to attracting the right customers, and keeping them. Customers relate to brands they identify with. The whole point of branding is to separate you from the competition; but the reason you stand out should be authentic.

Understanding and clearly articulating your company’s purpose, vision, mission, values, and strategic objectives will allow you to be able to position it successfully within the competitive landscape. A killer tagline is the perfect summary of all these messages and is a sure fire way to ensure your audience remembers you, there’s a lot you can say in just a few clever words. As well as conveying your unique value proposition, your tagline above all needs to be memorable.

Narrow down a clear visual identity

The identity is the visual component of a brand that represents those larger ideas. It needs to be consistent, it needs to be clear, and it needs to be the same no matter where it's displayed.

Colour palette - It’s important to know when and how to use colour. Your brand should have at least three colours: base, accent and neutral. These should reflect your personality, pair well visually and have a background that compliments and enhances the accent colours.

Typography - Like colour, the fonts you choose should match your brand’s personality, while being accessible to your audience. As well as your logo font, you should also have 2-3 fonts to use as main text font, headline font and accent font to make the text stand out.

Visual style - The pictures and graphics you use on your site should support the core message of your brand and reflect your target market. Images add immediacy and clarity to communications, so consider what different types of images mean for your brand identity. For example, Mailchimp uses illustrations to promote its brand, and these fit with the company’s younger, creative audience.

Months of work and energy go into rebranding a business and a lot of companies are guilty of thinking the work is done before the unveiling. Planning the reveal of the new branding with a launch strategy will make sure you get the most out of your new brand and have every base covered so the transition is as pain free as possible.

How you’re going to communicate and execute your new brand identity is crucial to the success of your rebranding as you don’t want to leave existing customers in the dark or feeling disconnected to the new branding. A good first step is to focus internally with a ‘soft launch’ so you can get everyone up to speed on the brand story. This will help you to iron out any early issues and also brings everyone on board to become your brand advocates for when the new branding becomes public.

Focus your story about why you decided to rebrand, the thinking behind the new look and feel as well as what the future holds for you company. Creating a story will help your customers relate to your brand on an emotional level, it’s impact is for their benefit so it has to resonate with your audience.

When it comes to the launch you can build anticipation with teasers and sneak peaks that will help to build buzz with your audience about what you’ve got planned. By the time you launch they’ll already have a vested interest about what’s upcoming.

To summarise

Not only is rebranding well worth doing, it’s well worth doing right. To undertake a successful rebrand of your business you need to ensure you’ve got a diverse range of input from marketers, designers, copywriters and PR to make sure you cover all your bases.