How To Rebrand Your Business!

There are many reasons to rebrand. A distinctive, effective one comes from three magic ingredients: purpose, process, and people.

Common drivers of a rebrand: Acquire, merge, or spin-out Reposition to another category (e.g., from everyday to premium) Shed legacy perceptions Reflect or clarify the offering Remediate visual or verbal limitations

Purpose

A rebrand must be intentional, done with clarity of purpose, and connected to the strategy and vision of the company.

Process

While the rationale varies, the fundamental process is the same.

Helpful questions to ask when discussing the purpose of a rebrand:

How do people see our brand today, and what do we wish were different?

When does our name open doors, and when does it close them?

What kind of company are we becoming?

How ingrained is our brand in the mind of the consumer?

1: Create the brief:

Get clear on the purpose, the stakeholders involved, how decisions get made, and what is in and out of scope for the rebrand. Be sure to clearly state the outcomes you hope to achieve; any deliverables produced should be in service of them.

2: Understand the business:

Become fluent in the context of the business and brand(s). Know the competitive landscape, the pressures facing the business, how money is made, how customers experience the brand, and what's been done in the past. Don't try to be an expert. Just do the homework and be empathetic.

3: Align on the problems to solve:

Establish a shared view of the challenges facing the business and brand, why they exist, and the opportunities unlocked when those problems are solved. Not every problem can be addressed, so pick the few that matter most to your audience.

4: Search for inspiration

Go outside of your office, your category, your comfort zone, your budget, and time constraints. Create collages, quote boards, and other things that provoke, inspire, or excite you. Great work is seldom conceived and delivered exclusively within the four walls of an office.

5: Select a creative direction

Using both inspiration and business context, assemble a range of creative directions that visualize the "look and feel" of a new brand. This is meant to show different solutions to problems facing the brand. Creative directions are starting points, not answers.

6: Create multiple brand directions

Equipped with clarity on the creative direction that will guide the design of the brand, reimagine both its visual and verbal expressions. Create only as many directions as are necessary to reflect meaningful trade-offs.

7: Select and prototype a single brand direction

Revise and finalize a single brand, direction by applying it to relevant and current use cases for the brand, (e.g., marketing campaign, sales deck, social media post). Totes have many uses, but effectively vetting a visual design is not one of them.

8: Launch the new brand into the world

The launch of a new brand ties back to the purpose set at the start of the work. Make a big splash if that's what's required, or be subtle if the noisiness of change is disruptive. When launching, consider all the places and spaces your brand shows up: online, in-store, in-product, etc.

People

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." - Tyson Even the most finely tuned process is still only as good as the people, in it. A balance of insiders, outsiders, experts, and generalists yields the greatest end product. Diversity over homogeneity every time.