New Year, New Me – Branding Edition

JANUARY 14, 2021| SpeedPro Greenville

The dawn of a new year is a great time to release something new about your business, whether it’s a new product, new sale or new advertising.

Or maybe it’s time to give the business a brand refresh.

Sometimes rebranding only constitutes a newly designed logo, but it could also mean rewriting your business mission statement or changing your target audience. The type of rebrand you’re going for, total or partial, determines how much you’re going to change.

A total rebrand consists of changing business core values, mission or vision, which then affects design elements. During a partial rebrand, a company makes adjustments to their visual brand identity, often to suit new offerings or market. A total rebrand changes who the brand is; a partial adjusts visual aspects of the current brand.

Whichever way you go, rebranding often has high payoffs, but a mistake could be quite costly. Before you start the process of reworking your brand, you may want to make sure you’re rebranding for the right reasons.

Rebrand Or Not To Rebrand?

So, what are good reasons to rebrand?

• Differentiate your business from competitors
• Create a new image for your business
• Market retargeting
• New philosophy company
• Merges and acquisitions

All of these reasons indicate a thought-out purpose behind the rebranding. On the flip side, some wrong reasons for rebranding your business are:

• Out of boredom
• To cover a crisis
• To make an impact as a new manager, owner, etc.
• For attention

No some of these ‘bad’ reasons, like wanting more attention for your business, may seem like good reasons. However, if you’re considering rebranding your business because your brand is lacking attention, you might want to look deeper into the problem.

For instance, if your real problem a wrong target audience, changing the look of your brand may work for some time, but eventually your business will begin to fail again because your current audience simply doesn’t want your product or service.

If you’ve determined your reason for rebranding is valid, that reason will most likely be the spearhead for your rebranding process. Each different aspect of your rebrand should be tied to your purpose for rebranding.

Rebranding Process

A partial or total business rebrand often follows a set of guidelines.

Determine what to change

Your purpose in rebranding greatly impacts what will be changed throughout the process.

If you’re adjusting your target market, you may only need to consider changing things like your advertisements and website voice.

If you’re changing your philosophy from “providing food to the needy” to “providing shelter and care to the needy”, you may consider changing your business workflow, your marketing collateral (flyers, mailers, etc.) and logo.

Whatever you deem to be changed, make sure to stay consistent and always have a good reason for the change.

Do your research

Before you start officially changing your logo, brand name or anything else for that matter, you may want to do some research. Do any of your competitors have similar logos? Is your new brand name slang for something inappropriate?

You don’t only have to look out for the addition of negative things. Make sure you aren’t losing key ingredients of your brand either. Are you currently doing some

thing really successfully that you don’t want to get lost in translation?

A great way to determine what your business is doing well or doing poorly is to survey your customers and stakeholders. The opinions of your customers and stakeholders should weigh into your final decisions.

Get Creative

 

Once you’ve figured out what part of your brand is undergoing change and you’ve done your research, now you can roll up your sleeves and get rebranding.

• Name – Hopefully you don’t have to change your brand name, but sometimes the change is necessary. Be sure to do your research, and avoid changing your name if possible.

• Slogan – Your slogan tells customers a lot about you. Often, it portrays the products and services of your business, your target market and sometimes the business’ tone or atmosphere.

• Voice & Tone – In writing circles, writers talk a lot about voice and tone. These two aspects of your writing affect the way people see your business. The wording you use can really make a difference. Maybe your business is transitioning from reactionary plumbing to a plumbing installation. You wouldn’t use the same terms and sense of urgency for both aspects of plumbing. How does your content label you?

• Logo – A very common aspect of your business to rebrand, your logo is also one of the primary ways the world recognizes your brand. If you choose to redesign your logo, try to keep at least some similarities in the designs, such as color, a shape or concept.

• Color, Typography, Images & Shapes – These four aspects of your brand can be very crucial. For instance, anytime I see red and yellow together I think McDonalds, regardless of where I see it. Whenever I see a target, I think of, well, Target.

Using shapes, colors, fonts and images consistently and in a bold way can set your brand apart from others or make your brand disappear among similar looking brands. Who know you had to be intentional about such seemingly insignificant brand aspects?

What To Rebrand?

After you’ve considered and reworked different aspects of your brand, you’re probably ready so start implicating the changes. Here comes the question: what actually needs to be updated and changed?

The answer to that question really depends on what aspects of your brand you changed. If you went for a total rebrand, that means everything.

If you change your logo, you’ll need to update anything with your logo. Similar idea with brand name and colors. Make sure not to forget even the little things like your email signature and business cards.

Maybe you’re a growing business and will update some things and also invest in new branding collateral.

We at SpeedPro can assist you in any of your large format printing needs. Need a new storefront sign? We’ve got you. Need new window perf or vehicle decals? We can do that and more. Reach out to a representative today – we’d love to help you through your rebranding process!