Rebranding is often an organisations first haircut. A successful rebrand will improve your business in three ways:
1. Protect, and increase your brand equity and market share
2. Increased brand recognition
3. Future-proof your identity
Let’s break this down a little.
The function of a brand is to identify your company/ service/ product and differentiate you from your competition. Ideally, the branding does this in such a way by communicating clearly, corporate values that are central to your company.
Brand equity is the most valuable part of your brand. Brand equity is the intrinsic value of the consumer’s perception of the brand.
"A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or organisation."
Marty Neumeier
When is the right time to rebrand?
There are two categories when we think of the reasons why an organisation will need to rebrand. Active and reactive.
Active rebranding
- Growth - A period of fast organisational growth makes your current branding feel immature and no longer relevant to your organisation.
- New product or market positioning - Connecting new audiences to increase market share.
- Modernisation and image refreshing - Your organisation’s brand has been left stuck in time, and in need of a visual update.
Reactive rebranding
- Differentiation & market competition
- New corporate vision
- Changing markets
- Acquisitions and mergers
- Legal, including trademark disputes
Approach
The rebranding process is begun by asking three questions:
What are the current pain points caused by your existing branding?
—What is it that’s keeping you up at night about your current brand, function, loss of differentiation and thus dilution of market share
Why is the thought of rebranding so stressful?
—Loss or recognition, quantity and scope of touchpoints
The most important rule of rebranding is not to disrupt the brand equity that your current identity holds. Often rebranding will encompass a corporate refreshing, or modernisation, rather than a complete overhaul of every brand element which will quickly destroy brand equity. This protect brand equity we will often advocate to include elements of the original branding, which could be particular shapes, forms and colours that are iconic to the brand.
Branding should communicate your corporate values and mission by being appropriate, considered and simple. Simplistically helps the brand stand the test of time, ensuring it remains relevant long into the future.
To consistently achieve the above for our clients we follow a phased process of insight, brand audit, ideation & revision, and finally, the new brand roll-out
Benefits of rebranding
A better positioned brand results in improved sales figures, and increased market share in the long-term.
Overall, a more relevant and modern visual identity future-proofs your brand whilst improving it’s recognition. It avoid trends to ensure it will remain relevant to your business and customers for the foreseeable future.
The updated identity is a vessel to hold your audience’s equity in the brand.