Companies rebrand themselves to re-energize their business. Rebranding is a very important strategic direction that a company undertakes. While there may be different reasons a company goes for rebrand however the objective is purely to tell the world what the new brand stands for showcasing its direction.
Why rebrand?
Companies want to rebrand themselves to showcase their new business agenda. However before reaching the rebranding stage there is a great deal of introspection that companies need to do before they rebrand. They firstly need to assess what do their customers, employees and partners presently think about their firm? Some of the more common reasons why companies rebrand are as under:
- Merger or acquisition. A merger or major acquisition can create a major shift in target audience or business strategy The rebrand is a broadcast telling the world of this change
- Reposition the firm. Many professional services firms go through phases of growth – which could be introduction of a new product line or adding a new geography to their service lineup. Rebranding can showcase the company’s new differentiators and tell a powerful story
- Public relations crisis. Rebranding can be an effective way to change/redirect negative public perceptions and can help begin the process of rebuilding a firm’s reputation
- Refresh an old brand. The marketplace is continually evolving. After a few years of neglect, a brand can lose its relevancy, look and sound dated, and become a drag on a firm’s success.
A challenge that a firm faces when it decides to rebrand itself, is to understand the scale and scope of the task. Once ascertained, they need to set realistic expectations and measure progress towards the following goals:
- Change in the nature of products and services being sold
- Greater prominence and recognition in the marketplace
- Customer acquisition and retention
- More inbound sales enquiries
- Increased sales, increased margins
- More website visitors, spending more time on their site
To achieve that level of impact they need to be able to make some clear-cut decisions about what they are going to stop doing and what they are going to start doing differently. This may include taking decisions with regards to changing their logo, revamping their website, rebranding their documents with new feel of color, fonts, and page layout. Once this decision has been made, the next step is to define guidelines of different elements for their rebranding. The next step would be to roll-out the rebranding step. Rollouts are a balancing act between stamping out the old brand and making sure that every element of the rebrand is in place and ready for launch. A proper strategy like one mentioned below needs to be implemented during the rollout phase.
Phases of rebranding
All rebranding exercises go through different phases as part of the rebrand.
These could be better explained as under:
- Assessment – This is where companies introspect and ask why do they need a rebrand, what is the reason for a rebrand and what they plan to achieve by a rebrand? Undertake a competitive analysis exercise to understand where you currently stand, what can you stretch to as a brand and what you would like to walk away from as a brand. In short understanding the market where you want to be and defining the delta between the current state and expected state.
- Planning – All firms require planning however this may vary according to varying degrees depending on the firm and its structure. Given below are the steps involved:
- Drafting a communication plan: The company needs to clearly assign responsibilities over who does what. People need to know when changes occur and where they need to go to find updated branded material. To a large degree, this comes back to updating the brand guidelines, and having brand guidelines that are easy to access and use.
- Detailing a rollout calendar: A big part of communicating is to let everyone know when rebrand is setting dates for change. They should have a calendar that details each stage of their rollout in order to make sure that everyone stays on the same page.
- Creating templates: The more the company is able to provide templates of the branded material, the easier it will be to ensure that everyone is using the right thing. Making sure that the right templates are in place and accessible by the time they go live is a critical step in a smooth transition.
- Assessing what stays and what goes: They will need to audit their existing branded material and decide what can be updated and what should be discarded entirely. They need to clearly assign who should update what and when.
- Purging of old assets: Getting rid of all old-branded material is a must. If the company has a good DAM (Digital Asset Management) platform, this will be as simple as setting the right permissions and hiding all of their old material from users.
To summarize, if the company wants to ensure a successful rebrand, they need to give the process the time it needs to properly develop. This way, they will have more space to conceptualize a new vision, ensure the direction aligns with the concept, and plan their brand’s transition into its new identity. When it comes to rebranding, mindset is just as important as execution. One needs to have a brilliant team of artists and strategists at their disposal for executing a seamless rollout.
If there are a load of documents using a similar style, it becomes simple to create a template and feed the old content into it to produce finished documents in the new brand. Without an efficient design team, one would not be able to implement the concept of rebranding. The design phase is what translates brand values into practical solutions such as a memorable and meaningful visual brand identity.
How Evalueserve can help: We are not a Brand Agency!
Our Evalueserve Design team is uniquely equipped of handling rebranding requests for asset management firms. We diligently understand the rebranding requirement of the entity. Our team of Design Desktop Publishing (DTP) experts go through the new template to understand the master slides and its components (e.g.; Header, Sub-header, body text styling, font size applicable on each segment, logo placement etc.). Once the understand and clarifies (through a consultative approach) the brand guidelines, they go through a rigorous training on the brand. After which they are able do the heavy lifting – converting the firm’s marketing collaterals into the new templates.
We have successfully completed multiple of rebrand exercises for asset managers, in certain cases multiple rebrands of the same asset managers.
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