While starting a new business, many owners don’t give much attention to branding beyond the Logo and Name.
That’s because most business owners believe that the brand identity of a business is nothing more than that of name and logo. I think that saying brands are just the logo and the name is just like saying people are the sum of their face and their make-up and their clothes.
But, a successful brand is much more than its Logo and Name.
Your Brand is the total sum of your customer’s experience and perspective. Hence, Brand Identity plays an important part.
But Brand Identity is not static. With the evolution of time, people change and their perspective change too. Companies evolve and often, to stay competitive, they must evolve their brand and branding. This happens for plenty of reasons.
Gradually, owners who think that only a logo and Name matters start thinking about the other appendage components. On the other hand, Owners might no longer love their logo or brand’s aesthetic that speaks about the company’s values and products. Or they might have realized that your brand simply isn’t doing a good enough job to differentiate them from their competitions.
That is all where Brand Revamp comes into the picture.
Well, before we go ahead, it is very important to understand the difference between Brand Revamp and Rebrand. These two are often exchanged with each other. In both cases, we know something needs to be fixed with the brand, but not sure how deep the problem goes—whether they need a surface-level update or a complete reboot.
What is Revamp?
Brand Revamping is the process where a company decides to make changes to their existing brand identity or message. Whether this change is needed to protect the brand’s reputation or revitalize customer interest in a brand or product. Marketers and owners do can find renewed success by taking the time to revamp their brand.
What Is Rebrand?
Brand Rebranding is more of an update than a complete rehaul of the brand. In most of the cases, a brand refresh focuses on visual changes. While the foundation of the brand stays the same, the visual presentation is given quick, modernized enhancements. This requires the company to rework just one stage of the branding process rather than creating a brand from the beginning. A brand Rebrand is ideal for a brand that already has a solid brand strategy, story, and philosophy.
Because the difference between a brand revamp and a rebrand is so profound, it’s important to get the decision right at the outset, or you run the risk of having to do the whole thing over again in a couple years.
Now, we will look at what’s involved in both, starting with the common challenges addressed by each.
The Brand Revamp
- Are your social media platform looks outdated?
- Are you embarrassed of the negative feedback on your website?
- Does your visual identity no longer capture your brand’s persona?
- Do you have an outstanding company, but you’re still struggling to find top performers?
If yes,then you are fundamentally strong, but feel stale or outdated. While it usually centers on a redefine of visual identity, a refresh can also affect culture, systems, products and services. Rejuvenating the look and feel of your brand can go a long way toward injecting new life into business performance and employee morale after all. Because you never, what is planned for you.
The Rebrand
- Have you gained a strong advantage in your market?
- Has your business model or strategy changed?
- Do you need to disassociate your brand from a negative image?
If yes, it is the time for a Rebrand. It is a fundamental reboot for companies struggling with the systemic issues that accompany growth, a business model shift, or an implacable PR disaster. With a rebrand, you are abandoning what your brand was for the sake of what it can be.
Coming back to the topic, let us understand Why Revamp Strategy is important?
For a successful revamping, the effort requires an accurate read of the market. And you must revamp for the right reasons and the right time – Otherwise, things can turn around.
Victoria Secret – one of the most celebrated women Lingerie Brand. It had been continuously receiving flak for the lack of diversity in their pool of models till their latest campaign. The campaign featured nine models of different ethnicities, body types, and skin tones. “All-new—and all about you. Join us as we redefine our lingerie landscape,” the brand wrote on Instagram.
The move for inclusivity was admittedly quite late for such a big brand like Victoria’s Secret and the campaign turned out to be a disaster. Moreover, the cancellation of the 2019 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show marked an end of an era for the popular lingerie brand. Sadly, a good number of recent rebranding attempts seemed to just crash and burn.
Rebranding a company’s goals, message, and culture is hard – many have tried and most fail. It requires more than a revamped logo or a twisted name. It requires a vision that inspires customers, investors, and others to see the company in a new light.
Now you must be wondering or might have even thought of Revamp but don’t know a right time to do. Well! If you’re like most businesses, it took you a long time—and a lot of hard work to knock out a successful Revamp. Just thinking about revamping it might be a challenge for you. But it’s a must if you want your strategy to succeed. Think about the revenue you’ll miss if you don’t at least evaluate your content marketing strategy to see if it needs a makeover.
But you critically need to take the step when –
- Your Search Results are Dropping Off
- You See Flat or Declining Numbers
- Your Content Is Too Self-Promotional
- Your Site Attracts Qualified Visitors But Not Paying Customers
- You’re Not Growing Your Social Media Presence
The next step is to solidify your own website revamp strategy using the advice in this article and get to work. Here, I have listed irresistible ways that can help you revamp your brand effortlessly and effectively –
Outline Goals, Plans and Expectations
First, work out what you want to achieve with this Revamp. What are the things that need to be changed? This will give you a better idea as to WHAT needs to change. You can consider the following things –
Who do you help?
- What do you want to be?
- How do you provide it?
- What’s the result?
- Why should people choose you over the other available solutions?
After acknowledging what these points, you can begin. The second thing is HOW? Well, in most of the cases basic brands are flat. To make your brand stand out from the crowd, you need to add some dimension to it. If you see there is a competition or some anticipated advances out there, you just need to be prepared for them.
With time people’s career, goals and interests change, so it is important to know what they want out of their career, their personal and professional goals. Then build a plan to help them get there with your Brand.
Understanding the Motivation behind the Brand Revamp
Revamping a brand can be a major undertaking for any business – no matter how small or big it is. But before you make any noticeable changes, you need to understand the motivation behind this important step.
Is the reason behind the big change based on customer feedback? Or is it your Self-Satisfaction? Or just a change in strategy because everyone is doing it?
Over the years, McDonald’s has been increasingly weighed down by the image of being a low-brow and blamed for making America fat.
But McDonald’s has since then tried to rebrand itself as more health-conscious with a greater variety of salads and other healthy meals. The Turley understood the motivation behind the Revamp. Under the slogans “I’m lovin it,” and families with young couples are seen enjoying their meals at McDonald’s. The company is also going after the coffee crowd with its fancier options.
Adapt current with the Trend
No matter what, you have to make sure what you do is right for the moment you live in. What makes things relevant? Without wishing to sound flaky, it’s a sensitivity to the spirit we live by today.
Not so far, Burberry was at risk of being disbanded as dowdy and over-extended. Well for the starters, they were starting look more like Gangwear. If you’d have seen Sherlock Movies, you’d often find thieves in trench coats which Sherlock wore him. The brand brewed issues for them. In no time, the brand was on a spree of decline. It was new leadership and savvy product design is what transformed the brand into one of the hottest fashion brands now. They overhauled the brand with a mix of modern and classic looks that included sexier apparels. They also included celebrities like Kate Moss and actress Emma Watson of Harry Potter fame.
Incorporate the Big Picture
When something big happens, like a logo change or new ambassador it always creates Hype.
Remember in 2016 when Instagram quietly changed its logo. Well, some loved it, some hated it, and some people like me thought a new app had appeared on our phones. In the last what it created Hype. The rebrand heard ‘round the world! The fact was that everyone was talking about it and had a perspective. That’s what the world’s important rebrands do.
Be very sure of the Design Element
When you rebrand, you might be tempted to retain a few of the old brand elements like your logo, brand colour palette, etc.
Sometimes, this is Fine. But a good brand strategy needs to fully assess the brand and decide whether those brand elements should be kept, tweaked, or discarded for stronger brand elements.
A rebrand goes beyond the makeover. It is plastic surgery with a change in hair colour. Creating new brand visuals is more like implementing a new visual identity. This includes updating your website, social media and other offline marketing designs with your new imagery and content text.
It’s a common rebranding hazard to assume a logo or name is the only brand element and fail to update all the relevant aspects accordingly.
Stand Out From the Crowd –
Before you REvamp, do your due REsearch.
Research what your competition does. Determine how you stand apart you from them, and what your true value proposition is.
For instance, once Target was seen as just another low-brow discount retailer, indistinguishable from Wal-Mart or K-Mart. They started offering pared-down versions of designer apparel and merchandise through exclusive deals with high-end designers like Issac Mizrahi, Fiorucci and to name a few. And Target began to stand out from its competitors.
Now as we know, Target is now the second-largest discount retailer in the United States. They simply set themselves apart from competitors with high-quality merchandise at lower prices.
For a company to stand out as a brand is never easy. But do some soul-searching and arrive at the company’s mission to find a path to articulate a unique message to ideal buyers.
Make a personal Connect
To revamp its image, Wal-Mart threw out its “Always Low Prices,” tagline in 2007 and replaced it with “Save Money. Live Better.”
By doing this they put a positive spin on the company’s reputation for offering merchandise at rock bottom prices. Moreover, they suggested that buying items at low prices will help improve customers’ lifestyles. For this REBRAND, an organization that judges companies on their rebranding efforts awarded Wal-Mart a REBRAND 100 Global Award of distinction.
In 2010 Wal-Mart was the world’s largest public corporation by revenue, according to the Forbes Global 2000 for that year.
This suggests that Customers want a better lifestyle. They will respond to Brands that they believe will help them achieve their goal.
Make it loud on Social Media
Any point of time today, we cannot neglect the Power of Social Media. Crafting, implementing and keeping up with a social media marketing strategy and plans can be a challenge for many businesses.
If you do not have one, create one for yourself. Many times brands will go through all the effort of an audit and come up with plans for revamping. But they won’t write it down in their central strategy document. You must update your actual strategy document with changes in messaging, creative, target audience, goals and anything else you identify in your audit.
Make sure to have the same communication across all your social media platforms. You can also consider Influencers or Micro –Influencers to create more Hype.
Why a Brand Revamp is good for your Brand?
Following are some the reasons that why I feel it is Good to have one –
- It can Reposition your Brand as a Key Player in the Market
- It allows you to fix any Previous Mistakes
- It Increases Interest in your Brand
- Last but not the least – Change is in the Air!
Building New Brand Guidelines
If you’re going to go through all the trouble of creating a new brand identity for your business, you better make sure you use it correctly. Having and implementing these brand guidelines will help you keep your brand consistent after the transition.
Brand guidelines are especially critical for logos. Logo guidelines are designed to make it as easy as possible for customers to see, recognize, and remember your logo — making up for any lost familiarity that comes with a rebrand.
Here are a few elements to consider when writing your logo guidelines:
- Logo elements. What visual elements make up your logo? When and how are each of them used?
- Color variations. What does the colored version of your logo look like? What about black and white? When are each of these used?
- Clear space. Also called padding, this is the space around your logo that prevents overlap or obscuring. Aim for at least 10% of width at all times.
- Unacceptable uses. What can never be done to your logo? What color variations, rotations, scaling, etc. do you want to avoid?
A lot of people also don’t take the step because of the fear of losing identity and potential customers. As they say “The decision to rebrand was a fairly easy one to take. The real problem arose in the details and the implementation. Like peeling back layers of an onion, you don’t realize all that goes into a rebrand until you get into it.”
Following are the steps you can take for the assurement –
Don’t drop the ball on existing customers.
When it comes to rebranding, outside opinions will no doubt help to shape your decisions. Whether it’s designers, agencies, or customers, everyone will have a say. And so should your people.
After all, before you decide who you want to become, it’s vital that you understand who you already are.Competing priorities – especially client or customer-facing priorities – will always require your time and attention ahead of the rebrand.”
Publicize your rebrand
Use social media, press releases, and media contacts to communicate with customers and the general public. Alongside traditional considerations such as PR, and advertising engage your employees to help spread the story via their own blogs, social media channels, and LinkedIn profiles.
Anticipate questions and concerns
Communicating with customers during a revamp is key to maintaining existing client relationships. If customers doesn’t understand why changes are happening, they may lose trust in the business, and you could see a significant drop in revenue. This will eventually affect you Brand Identity.
People are your evangelists. So it stands to reason that if you’re embarking on a project as big as a rebrand they should be involved in every step of the process. They will be also thrilled that you are trying to expand your mission to other communities and they are a part of it.
Conclusion
In the last the decision to revamp your brand should never be taken lightly. Done right, a revamped brand can position your brand as a key player in your target market. It can also allow you to fix any mistakes in your previous brand message, and reinvigorate interest in your brand.
Marketers should ensure that no change, be it big or small, jeopardizes the integrity or overall brand identity of the business, product or service.With the constant stream of new information and competition, having a relevant and up-to-date brand is an important tool when growing.
What’s going to be important in your Brand Revamp? Let us know in the comments below!