Corporate Rebranding: A Guide

Rebranding a company gives a business a chance to change its image and create a fresh public persona. Through rebranding, companies seek to open new markets, polish their products or services, fine-tune their message or, in a worst case scenario, distance themselves from public relations disasters.

Rebranding is a serious, time-consuming process not to be undertaken lightly. Should rebranding fail, a company may never recover its lost market presence. When performed correctly, however, rebranding strategies create new and lasting relationships with customer and client bases, increase sales, and usher in a new phase in your business development.

Why Rebrand Your Company?

No-one rebrands a company without a compelling reason. Rebranding always comes with risks involved. Possible reasons to consider a rebrand include:

• Diminished market presence, new competitors, or changes in public tastes.
• The need to target developing consumer demographics.
• The need to tie the company to a new idea or location.
• Negative consumer responses to public relations disasters, poor product reviews, or serious missteps in customer service.
• Inferior products or designs whose reputation is now tied to the company’s.
• Conflicts with stakeholders.
• Corporate expansion or consolidation due to mergers, acquisitions, and spin-offs.
• Company internationalization.
• Modernization of outdated images and logos.
• Changes to your brand portfolio.
• The need to develop or change existing brand components.

Deciding What Needs to Change

Only rarely does rebranding a company require everything about the company to change, and even if it does, attempting to implement all rebranding changes at once would be a logistical nightmare. Your initial branding strategy should be to take a critical look at your existing brand elements and decide what needs to change. Careful planning at this stage can mean the difference between a successful rebrand and chaos.

Brand elements you should consider include:

 

• Logos, images, and company colors.
• Services and products.
• Taglines and mottos.
• Market positioning.
• Messaging.
• Names (the company's and any product or service names).

Deciding what needs to change requires a deep understanding of your business--and that of your competitors. One of the most effective rebranding strategies is to take a deep dive into your industry. What opportunities are you, and your competitors, seizing on or missing? What works? What doesn’t? What’s outdated, irrelevant, or simply not resonating with your target audience. For that matter, has your target audience changed? Companies evolve, and the customers you started with may not be the people you need to connect with now.

Rebranding, Resources, and Timing

Once you understand which brand elements need updating, your next step is to determine the resources and time you need for a successful rebrand. If you’re changing the business logo, for instance, you may need a company like Triple Crown Products to help with logo design and product promotion once the new logo is rolled out. You'll also need to order matching workwear adorned with the new logo, change business stationary, order up-to-date promotional materials, and make changes to everything from physical signage to website designs.

Bear in mind that altering or redesigning a logo is one of the simpler rebranding strategies. Completely rebranding a business will take much longer and require more resources. Whether rebranding will fall to in-house staff or external contractors is also an issue, as is stakeholder involvement and the urgency of the rebrand (a slightly outdated logo rebrand has a more flexible time schedule than rebranding in the wake of a public relations nightmare).

Steps in the Rebranding Process

A rebrand is a risky proposition. Done correctly, the process makes new connections with target audiences, restores relevance, and builds a strong new reputation. When not done correctly, however, a rebrand can be a disaster. For example, when orange juice brand Tropicana replaced its familiar “orange with a straw in it” logo with a simpler design, sales dropped 20 percent. The reason? The change was so different consumers didn't realize it was the same product. Eventually, Tropicana abandoned the new design and returned to their old, familiar logo.

For a more positive example, you need only look to Old Spice. Long viewed as the deodorant used by the elderly, Old Spice captured the attention and loyalty of a new generation with their Old Spice Swagger campaign, which suggested big celebrities like LL Cool J were wimpy nerds until they started using Old Spice. The company followed it up with the Man Your Man Could Smell Like campaign, and gave their brand a fun, hip new image that proved hugely successful.

Old Spice’s success didn't materialize out of thin air (neither, for that matter, did Tropicana’s misstep). Both companies put a great deal of time, money, and resources into their branding strategies. Only one got the formula right, so how do you wind up on the winning side of the equation? The following steps can help you build a successful rebrand:

 

1. Craft Your New Vision Carefully. At the beginning of the process, ask the tough questions. What does the brand stand for? Is it still relevant? What is and is not working? Do you need to build attraction with your old audienc, or should you target a different demographic?
2. Do Your Research. How are you faring compared to the competition? What challenges and opportunities does the future hold? How can you capitalize on these changes to yield positive results?
3. Who Will Be Affected? Which stakeholders will be most affected by your rebranding strategies, and how are they likely to react? Consider stockowners, customers, partners, and internal departments. Who will have the final say on branding decisions? Who might object to the process?
4. Set Your Timelines andn Budget. Who will manage rebranding strategies, control quality assurance, and implement changes? When will internal and external changes go live?
5. Gather Feedback. Before rolling out changes, survey a small group of stakeholders and customers to gauge their response and determine which rebranding efforts work, which require revisions, and whether any proposed changes fall flat.
6. Launch Changes. Set a date to rollout your rebrand, and inform both employees and customers ahead of time.

Rollout the Rebrand

Rollout is one of the most important steps in the rebranding process. Until this point, no irreversible steps have been taken. Once your rebrand goes live, however, everything changes. The success or failure of rebranding strategies hinges on the efficiency of your rollout.

To ensure the smoothest rollout possible, all employees should be informed of new guidelines and trained in their use. Employees should possess the information, updates, and messaging needed to communicate with the public. Inform customers, partners, and service providers of the rebrand well in advance. Send news releases to industry and general media outlets as well.

Determining the ROI of a Company Rebrand

Measuring the effect of rebranding strategies is difficult, as multiple factors are at play. You can gain some insight into how your rebrand is received by tracking the following elements:

• Customer retention.
• Customer lifetime value.
• Brand mentions (both positive and negative).
• Referrals.
• Social media engagement.
• Employee retention.

Rebranding a company is a significant undertaking, and one that should never be entered into lightly. If you need help with rebranding, Triple Crown Products can advise you on logo design and effective product promotion.