A marketing strategy that involves changing a company’s corporate image, organisations can rely on rebranding when developing a new name, logo or related visual assets such as marketing materials.

Rebranding is used to create a new and differentiated brand identity in the eyes and minds of consumers, investors, prospects, competitors, employees and the general public.

Brand identity is an essential part of any organisation, not just PR agencies – as the name of the business and logo are critical ambassadors for any brand and must, therefore, be strong and unique. A good brand communicates what they do and how, but a good brand must also establish trust and credibility with stakeholders and consumers.

However, a lot of organisations evolve and/or come to discover that their brand identity is actually undermining their efforts to grow as a business. This is why making the decision to rebrand – and ensuring that goal objective is completed successfully – is of the utmost importance.

Assess your current brand

Before you start trying to make changes, you need to know the current standing of your brand. A brand audit helps you to understand what is working for your brand, what’s not working for your brand and what opportunities there are for a brand to grow and improve.

Considering each of those points will not only allow you to plan your rebranding, but it helps you to avoid any mistakes that you had made previously with your brand.

The more established the brand is, the riskier a rebrand it can end up being. A brand audit will help you to determine whether a complete brand overhaul or if a partial rebrand will suffice – as it refers solely to the internal perspective of your brand.

Conduct market research

Market research is vital for any marketing decision (or any big business decision, for that matter.) While you may have an idea as to what the general public think of your brand and how they rank you among your competitors, the only sure-fire way to find out is to ask them.

Unless your rebrand will see you embark on a brand new market, start your market research by speaking to existing customers to find out what they think about your current brand.

Surveys are always a popular place to start – as they are an easy, affordable way to collect feedback and customer data. There is also the small matter that 90% of consumers have a more favourable opinion of businesses that ask them for feedback.

Make use of a free tool like Google Forms, SurveyMonkey or Typeform to put your survey together, beforing distributing it across your email list.

For those encouraging new audiences, the employment of brand personas will allow even the most niche of subjects to thrive. Offering actual insights for people, it is very beneficial – as you’re not just relying on the demographics.

When you know how your audience thinks and behaves, then you can tailor your new and improved brand back to them.

Finally, market research can provide a deep-dive into your competitors. Competitor research helps to show who your competitors are, what they do well and whether there are any opportunities for your organisation to stand up. Like anything, the more you learn about your competition, the better equipped you with.

Review your mission statement

Each organisation should have a short, action-oriented mission statement to comprehensively explain what the business aims to accomplish.

In layman’s terms, it’s why your business exists. What acts as the motivation for you to complete the work you’re doing day in, day out? Your mission statement should be the primary driver for every part of your brand, from your logo to your brand voice.

Prominent author and motivational speaker Simon Sinek’s The Golden Circle concept insists the most successful organisations “Start with why,” with the why being “a purpose, cause, or belief. It’s the very reason your organisation exists.”

Your “why” may be the same as when you first started and there’s nothing wrong with that. Once you figure it out, your mission can then be integrated into every single aspect of your brand identity.

Redesign your visual identity

The rebranding strategy continues with the updating of your brand’s visual identity, which incorporates any creative asset – such as your logo, fonts and colour palette – that is related to your brand.

It’s not just the revamp of your logo or colour scheme either, as you can decide if you need other visual elements to be improved upon. A total redesign of the website could be one aspect, or even bespoke fonts for your brand and social media assets for future posts.

Visual assets are an integral part of branding, marketing and sales – as up to 90% of purchases are influenced by visual aspects, while 40% of marketers insist that their marketing targets were reached last year due to original graphics.

Construct your brand voice and messaging

That’s not the end of the creative updates either – as your brand voice reinforces your brand personality through written content, from your company tagline all the way through to email copy.

When considering a rebrand, ask yourself whether that means a change of brand voice is needed. Do you have a new mission that you wish to share? Or are you dealing with a new audience?

Your market research will also be able to help with this aspect – as one of the most lucrative forms of research of this type is the voice of customer research, which allows you to gain knowledge of how your audience describes their thoughts and needs in their own words.

Your brand voice and messaging needs to reflect the mission and values you have assigned to the organisation, otherwise there is a lack of consistency within the organisation.

Unveil your rebrand

Once you’ve got everything sorted and planned, you can then enjoy rolling out the complete rebrand you’ve been working on for weeks/months/years.

It’s important to ensure you reach out and create a valuable brand consistency. This includes the less lucrative jobs of updating all of your marketing materials and customer touchpoints with your new branding.

While this can be rather tedious, compared to some of the other elements of the rebranding process, it’s one of the most vital aspects of the rebranding process.

Announcing a new logo when a noticeable selection of your marketing materials still make use of the old logo will only cause confusion with customers, followers and other stakeholders, such as affiliates and partners.

You may have updated your marketing materials and be ready to shout about your rebrand, but what are the best ways to announce your launch?

• Publish a press release
• Schedule a post of all of your social media channels, while also updating profile and cover photos with the new branding (where applicable.)
• Send an e-shot to your subscribers to bring the rebrand to their attention.
• Use your rebranding process to create a case study that other brands can then use to learn from your experiences.
• Construct a blog post to share your story, mimicking the tactic implemented by Slack in 2019.

Whichever way you decide to do it, ensure you explain the reasons for making the changes and reveal how it reflects your brand’s growth and mission – as this transparency and authenticity will be very important to your followers.

Rebranding doesn’t have to be overly complicated or an expensive process. While it may take up a fair bit of time to sort all of the required details, the results are well worth it when you finally get it right.

Curzon PR is a London-based PR firm working with clients globally. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our Business Development Team [email protected]