When is it time to update your brand?

There’s always been a sort of pendulum that companies go through with their marketing between a focus on brand vs. product-based marketing. Both have an important role and require completely different approaches and expertise to do them well. Each company will have their unique level of investment between the two and that will change over time. It’s a normal requirement to balance short-term revenue goals with long-term brand sustainability and the necessity to continuously innovate to stay relevant in a rapidly evolving market. However for brand marketing, there also comes a time when it needs to be refreshed or even completely updated.

But how do you know what and when it’s time?

Whether you call it repositioning, refreshing, or a rebrand, all of which may or may not include a design update, if it’s been more than several years, it’s time to take a look. The fact is that your target audience, competition, and the market landscape is constantly changing. If you are standing still with the same brand voice, positioning, messaging, appearance or customer experience, then the world is moving past you. The need to stay modern, relevant, and agile never stops.

Beyond simply time, some signs that your company may need to rebrand include flat or declining sales, stagnant marketing metrics, competitors that are taking larger market share or growing faster than your company, or realizing your messaging is not saying anything new that is relevant and distinguishing. A simple logo or design change won’t do the trick. Read more about why your logo is not your brand here: https://www.lasoi.com/points-of-view/2018/4/29/your-brand-is-more-than-your-logo

What does rebranding entail?

Rebrands vary widely in approach, effectiveness, and ultimately cost. Established brands must modernize without losing their identity. Reaching a new market or target audience requires a better understanding of the target audience and crafting new messaging along with rethinking the tactical marketing approach. However, this can be tricky because you never want to erode the core essence of your brand and alienate loyal advocates of your brand.

So, what is a company to do?

It starts with assessing where your brand stands today and the perceptions of your brand vs. your brand aspirations. It’s basically an audit, or in simpler terms, a reality check on the current situation. The good thing about starting with insights is that it will reveal areas of improvement, potentially discover new opportunities, and most importantly, help determine if the brand just needs some updating vs. a larger rebrand effort. Most fall into the former category.

Once the scope is determined, the next step is to dig deeper by gathering more insights from customers, the market, and perhaps an even deeper dive into your company than the initial audit. These will serve as the basis for defining the brand and messaging, and also determining any potential changes to the visual identity and marketing plans (both brand and performance based). One other critical item to keep in mind is that once the brand work has been done (let’s call it the plan) – it must be activated. Otherwise like many other efforts, it will just be a document and wasted money. The depth and potential cost of implementing the changes can vary widely and are important to discuss and understand prior to beginning the brand work.

How can success or improvement be measured?

There are a number of ways to measure how effective your branding efforts are paying off. Though you can’t directly attribute only brand marketing directly to sales, that is obviously a strong indication things are going in the right direction. Other ways to measure effectiveness include a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

One in particular that comes up is fielding a brand awareness and perception study. This can stem from a need, though often more of a desire, to have metrics associated with their branding to get some numbers behind the investment. That typically takes the form of a before and after quantitative brand awareness and perception study. We often advise against this unless it is absolutely necessary. A company must have a clear plan on what to do with the data, be committed to both the pre and post study (which should be at least a year after the rebrand is implemented), and have the money – it’s expensive. These studies are generally reserved for larger companies where the rebranding will result in far reaching downstream strategic and tactical changes based on the results of the insights. And, important for communicating to stakeholders the result of the overall investment.

Regardless of the type of branding effort required, if it’s been a few years, are experiencing flat or declining performance metrics, or it is simply clear that your company or products are losing relevance, it’s time to assess, gather your insights, and determine the best path forward.