If you don’t Understand Why you Won’t Understand How
If you are considering re-branding your business, it is essential that you have clear business reasons as to why you want to re-brand your company before embarking upon a potentially expensive re-branding project. Re-branding is not about just freshening up your existing brand – it is a business-critical decision and should not be taken lightly.
The first step in any rebranding project it to ensure that you have a very clear understanding of why you want to re-brand your business. The following are the three general categories that re-branding projects tend to fall in to. Consider your re-branding project and identify which category best fits your circumstances. Please note that it is possible for your re-branding project to fall into more than one category. If this is the case, don’t try to force it to fit into one category.
Change of ownership. Changing the ownership of a business is one of the most critical events that a business can go though. It is, therefore, important to manage this change carefully to ensure a successful transition in Ownership. Done properly, re-branding can help this process by communicating the change of ownership (and possible change of direction/identity) to your stakeholders.
Poor performance. If your business is not performing as well as it should and you have taken, or are in the process of taking, steps to improve its performance then rebranding can be a useful way to communicate these improvements to your marketplace. Please note, however, that rebranding can do more harm than good if it is not accompanied by real change in your organisation.
Audit your brand
If you are still unsure whether re-branding is the correct strategy, it may be worth undertaking a Brand Audit before embarking on a rebranding project for your business.
Undertaking a complete audit of your existing brand can be a very useful first step as it will uncover its strengths and weaknesses as well as the underlying reasons for re-branding. This information can be used to inform the decision as to whether rebranding is the correct strategy for your business and also to inform the brand creation process in the event that rebranding is the correct way to go.