To rebrand or not to rebrand? When it comes to business, it’s an inevitable question.
Regardless of how successful, effective, or renowned your brand is, the odds are that at some point you’re going to be asking yourself that very question.
Even a nearly all-encompassing search engine like Google has had to change its logo and branding almost as many times as you have fingers, since its inception.
Rebranding can be a very positive and rewarding experience for a lot of brands. It’s an opportunity for you to experience a “soft reboot” of sorts. When it's done right, it can help you connect with a new audience, stay current, and even increase your sales.
Getting your branding on point can be an extensive process. So, as much of an eventuality as rebranding is, it’s important to make sure you know when exactly is the right time to rebrand.
6 Signs It's Time for a Rebrand
Whether or not you rebrand can be a difficult decision for any organization to make. Knowing when to enact change can be as difficult as actualizing that change. To make things a bit easier for you, take a look at these six signs that your brand is due for a change.
1. Your Brand Doesn’t Align With Your Vision or Values
Your brand vision is one of the most important aspects of your brand. It can act as an anchor and help define who you are and who you want to be as a brand.
Small changes in your brand, values, ownership, audience, tone of voice, and personality occur naturally over time. This can mean you may find yourself needing to update your brand as a whole to ensure alignment.
Everything changes over time. Societal values, what customers want from brands they use, corporate ambitions, financial goals, etc. It’s perfectly fine to adjust your brand vision to get with the times or to match a shift in personality or ownership.
To find out whether or not your brand and its vision match, try asking yourself some of the following questions:
- What do you think you should change about your brand?
- In 5 to 10 years, what do you want your brand to have achieved?
- Do you have plans to expand any time soon?
- Do you see your brand targeting a new audience?
- What new products are you developing?
- How do you want your brand to develop to achieve your goals?
Your brand vision should combine your answers to these questions and paint a clear picture of what you want for your brand. This is incredibly helpful when it comes to helping you formulate what your brand's values are.
Your brand's vision guide and values are vital to creating a successful business. Customers want to support brands whose values and goals align with theirs. These concepts should be actionable and a part of daily life for everyone in your company.
Once you’ve decided to rebrand, it’s vital that you make sure you learn more about rebranding as effectively as possible.
Brands that don’t practice what they preach are easily found out and torn to shreds in today's fast-paced, social media lead, digital world. That’s why it’s so important to get your rebranding right.
2. You’re Experiencing a Merger or Acquisition
Mergers and acquisitions are one of the most popular reasons a brand chooses to rebrand.
When it comes to an acquisition, it’s important to consider how the brand that’s been purchased fits into the structure of the brand doing the purchasing. It’s easy to assume the look and feel of each business will remain as is, but that’s not always the case. Working on this structure can save you a major headache in the future.
Rebranding can affect every aspect of both brands. Take your newsletters for example. If you’re going to be attempting a full rebranding, using Flodesks favorite Mailchimp alternative may make the whole process a lot easier.
Mergers can be equally complicated, if not more so.
With a whole host of functionality concerns to look at (from redundancy in each brand, to how products will be presented), your new corporate identity, color scheme fonts, etc., should all play a role in your decision-making.
If you are experiencing a merger or acquisition and benefiting from new technologies, apps, distribution, and marketing, remember your rebrand will affect every aspect of our business.
Rebranding with a stringent focus on the technical details will make the whole process a lot smoother. It’s important to look at the process like pieces of a puzzle that need to come together to create a stunning, coherent, and functional project: your new brand.
3. Your Target Audience Has Changed
Your brand, its products, tone of voice, and marketing should all be directed to as specific a target audience as possible.
When it comes to marketing, it’s important to hit the mark wherever you can.
As your brand grows and your audience changes or grows over time, you may find yourself needing to appeal to the latest iteration of that audience.
If it turns out your brand is appealing to an entirely different audience from the one you’ve intended, that can be a major indicator that you need a rebrand. When you started building your brand and orienting your products, you probably had a target market in mind, hopefully for very good, data-backed reasons.
If you’re not reaching them, rebrand.
Be careful, though. If you’re trying to broaden your scope, it’s important not to alienate your existing base audience. The last thing you want to do is do a complete overhaul only for your current customers to pull back or turn to a more recognized competitor.
Bearing that in mind, it’s important to remember that on the whole, humans aren't all that fond of change. This means that even if you pull off a seamless, beautifully structured rebrand, you may still see some negative reactions.
Making sure you've fully researched why it is your rebranding and planned for any scenario is essential. It can be tough to stick to your guns when you start seeing negative pushback.
Knowing why you’re rebranding and who you hope to appeal to is crucial.
4. You Want to Change Perceptions About Your Brand
A bad enough scandal can shake an organization to its core. The adage of any publicity being good publicity doesn't quite hold true these days.
In an age of viral videos, social media, and increased consumer awareness, bad publicity can be irrevocably damaging. While some brands can shrug off bad publicity and wait for the news cycle to move on, some brands aren't so lucky.
Taking measured steps to rectify the problem can help you salvage some credibility, but this is not always the case. Take “The Lance Armstrong Foundation” as an example.
After its founder was involved in a much-publicized doping scandal, the brand was rebranded as “Livestrong”.
Before
After
While the organization did experience an expected knock as a result of the bad publicity, it managed to survive. A new logo, web design, and public statements allowed the brand to thrive and continue carrying out its mission.
5. You're Not Attracting the Talent You Want
A slightly less considered effect of good branding is its ability to attract quality talent that can help you grow and develop your business.
As the employee recruit pool becomes more competitive, relying on HR and various recruitment companies or sites alone is no longer feasible. Your company as a brand and website needs to be capable of attracting candidates as well.
The best candidates out there choose companies and brands with good reputations that stand out. You either need to come across as an established force or an innovative up-and-comer (in addition to offering competitive salaries, benefits, and workplace culture).
Finding out what candidates think about your brand is essential if you want to keep attracting the best of the best. Data-backed brand research, surveys, and polls during interviews can help you get a true sense of what the people who potentially are going to help you grow your business think of it.
6. You Want to Stand Out From Your Competitors
The last thing any brand wants to do is blend in.
Differentiation is one of the most important things when it comes to building a successful brand. Authentic, personality-driven branding can make a real difference when it comes to standing out.
You may be in the same industry, but that’s no excuse to look the same.
It’s one thing to try and keep up with the evolution in consumer trends and preferences, and another thing entirely to churn out a by-the-numbers branding and rebranding.
Remember, just because competitors are adopting sleeker, more minimalistic logos and designs, does not mean you have to. Reactionary rebrands that try to keep with the times, just to keep with the times can often come across as just that.
Unauthentic and unoriginal.
Two words you definitely don’t want to be associated with your brand.
Final Thoughts
Frivolous rebranding can have a catastrophic effect on your brand and the way your customers view it. Not only can it make you come across as dated and irrelevant, but that perception can also eventually harm your company's bottom line.
Ensuring that you’re rebranding for the right reasons can be one of the most positive experiences your brand can have since it started.
It’s only natural for a brand to evolve with its customers, employees, and leaders. Being versatile enough to handle the change is a major asset for any business. Especially for one’s looking to thrive in today's fiercely competitive, fast-paced world.
Keeping an eagle eye on these six signs will ensure your brand reaches the heights envisioned when it was created.