No one ever said a rebrand was easy.
But with a little preparation, the right state of mind, and a few helpful tips, surviving a rebrand doesn’t have to be a white knuckle affair.
Whether you’re about to kick off a rebrand of your own, or you’re just curious about what the process might entail, this blog post is for your.
In what follows, we’ll provide some indispensable tips–not just for surviving a rebrand, but for getting the most out of the process when you do.
CONTENTS
What is a Rebrand?
A rebrand is the process of reshaping how a company or product is perceived. A rebrand typically includes research, strategy, identity, and activation.
The result of a rebrand can include the reimagining of everything from a brand’s name and tagline to its logo and visual identity to its website and marketing collateral.
4 Tips for Surviving a Rebrand
After more than a hundred rebrands over the course of more than a decade, we’ve seen just about everything when it comes to rebrands. But there are a few challenges that surface more than others.
The following is some of the most common advice we share with our clients when they’re facing the long but rewarding journey that every rebrand entails.
1. Always Remember the Why
There’s a reason why you decided to rebrand. Usually it boils down to the fact that your brand no longer embodies your company’s vision for the future.
It’s important to remember this key pain point, especially during the difficult times you’re likely to face at some point during the rebranding process.
The rebranding journey is long and complex, with many different phases. It can be easy to get distracted and start heading in the wrong direction.
When in doubt, try to remember the original reason behind the decision to rebrand. Remembering why you decided to start the journey in the first place is the best way to make sure you remain on the correct course.
2. Be Open to Change
Seems obvious, right? The very fact that you’ve decided to rebrand should mean that you’re open to change. But you’d be surprised.
Many executives are open to the idea of change. But, when the rubber hits the road, and change is actually imminent, they get cold feet and send creative teams back to the drawing board.
Change is seldom easy, and we are programmed to fear the unknown.
Familiarity is comforting–even when it’s ultimately working against us. Key stakeholders can also feel a special ownership over the current brand, making them even more averse to moving beyond it.
When impulses like this arise, it’s important to remember that we aren’t changing things just for the sake of change. There is research, evidence, and purpose behind every decision in a rebrand.
3. Trust the Process
This isn’t the first rebrand your branding agency will have conducted, nor will it be their last.
The process they’ve developed over countless clients before you is in place for a reason. Each step is carefully designed to follow the previous one, and benefit from the work done therein.
The best rebrands start with research into current brand perceptions—those of both internal and external stakeholders.
Data from the research phase informs the strategy or brand positioning phase, where a brand is repositioned according to customer needs and marketplace opportunities.
Only after research and strategy does a rebrand proceed to the identity phase, where the visual and verbal identities of a brand are reimagined.
Visual identity includes logos, colors, typography, and photography. Verbal identity includes names, taglines, and messaging.
The identity phase typically culminates with the redesign of a website and/or marketing collateral, which is then introduced to the world in the final phase, brand activation.
By trusting the process outlined above, you can be confident in the outcome: a cohesive and compelling brand that’s the product of rigorous, considered, and collective effort.
4. Make a Clean Break
Perhaps the most important piece of advice for surviving a rebrand relates to the moment of truth in any rebrand: the brand launch.
When all the preparation has been done and the time comes to finally make the switch, the best piece of advice we can give is: don’t look back.
Do everything possible to put your old brand in the rearview mirror. Shred old collateral and scrub the web of old digital iterations.
This doesn’t mean you need be ashamed of your old brand—it served you well for years, after all. But only confusion can come from having one foot in the future and one in the past.
And when it comes to business, confusion is costly.
The Takeaway
Surviving a rebrand can be a daunting proposition. Even for companies who are convinced that change is necessary, actually implementing that change is rarely a comfortable and straightforward endeavor.
The good news is that with the right mindset and the pointers outlined above, rebranding need not be a painful experience.
In the end, we find that, when done right, it’s always worth the effort—your new brand will be painstakingly built to embody all you hope to achieve in the future.
Brian Lischer
A prolific blogger, speaker, and columnist, Brian has two decades of experience in design and branding. He’s written for publications including Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc. Magazine, Fast Company, HuffPost, and Brand Quarterly.
