Change is difficult. It’s so much easier to coast along in cruise control. But change is also inevitable. And nowhere more so than in business.
Just when you think you’ve got everything in your business dialed in just the way you want it, it’s time for a rebrand here or an office update there. Fashions change, coworkers change, technologies change, and pandemics happen. And for a company to stay competitive, it needs to adapt quickly and nimbly. A business, after all, is a living thing. If nurtured and maintained, it can grow and thrive. But if it’s allowed to languish, it will end up on a defensive footing, in a constant state of fight or flight.
The adaptive and well-adapted brand
A healthy brand, like a healthy person, needs to be flexible and able to adapt to an ever-changing environment. Health is not a destination where you can finally arrive and say, “At last, I did it.” Instead, it’s a state that requires ongoing maintenance.
And it’s the same with branding. You start by building a cohesive brand strategy based on deep research into your audience and your competition. Then you develop a personality around your brand, using archetypes as a guide to shape the persona with characteristics that are familiar and attractive to your audience. Finally, you learn to speak to them with language and tone of voice that will resonate with their hopes and desires.
It might sound like a lot of work, and it is. So once you’ve finished ironing out your master brand, you may want to place it on a pedestal to cherish and admire. But that’s not how it works. Your carefully crafted brand is a tool that can guide you and your team in all your business communications and interactions. But it’s not a document etched in stone.
7 Reasons why you might need to rebrand
With a well-prepared brand strategy, your business and your brand should be pretty robust for at least the first couple years. Still, we recommend checking in with your brand at least once a year to make sure you’re still on the right track.
A lot can change, and as we’ve seen in the last couple of years, those changes can come pretty darn fast. So here are seven signs that it’s probably time for a rebrand, an update, or at least some serious revisions.
1. Outdated branding
Trends and fashions are powerful things. It’s easy to get consumed by them and believe, for example, that torn-up jeans not only look fantastic, but that they always have, and that they will always remain a pillar of high fashion. Or bell-bottom jeans, or corduroy jeans, or jeans that hang halfway down below your crack. You get the idea.
The same goes go with brands and images. Even things that may seem so lifeless, like fonts and colors, are very vulnerable to the winds of fashion and passing fancies. So what looked awesome five or ten years ago could end up looking ridiculous tomorrow.
And that’s when it pays to have an expert designer on your side. You might know which shoes are in style, or which song to sing on Karaoke night, but do you know which fonts are the most popular right now? Or which fonts are most likely to lose traction in the next year or two?
Again, you want to get ahead of the ball in order to adapt proactively rather than defensively. But if the look and sound of your brand already feel out-of-date, it’s definitely time for a reset.
2. Change of business name or business ownership
When something as fundamental as the name or owner of the business changes, it’s a great opportunity to rebrand. Look at it this way, every brand eventually needs an update, so it makes a lot more sense to do it now. If the names are changing, then you’re going to be reprinting all kinds of signs and business cards anyway. So you might as well take this chance to freshen up the look and style while you’re at it.
Oftentimes, just the company’s name can have a major influence on the company’s logo or appearance. A word like IKEA, for example, kind of has to be in block letters, right? Certain words and letters look good in cursive, while others simply do not.
And here’s a bit of cinematic trivia: When Orson Welles was looking for a name for his movie masterpiece, he couldn’t get over how strong the words “Citizen Kane” would look on the poster, with the Z and the K together. Branding has everything to do with psychology, and it’s amazing how much subconscious information can be conveyed through a single word or even a couple of letters.
3. Overcome a bad reputation
Once in while even the most diligent businesses can run into problems that compromise their reputation or result in bad publicity. Perhaps it was an unscrupulous team member, or maybe just a huge misunderstanding. Whatever the cause, it sounds like the right time to call “Do over!”
There’s nothing like a fresh image to help your business distance itself from an unfortunate association. And it’s not just about playing a clever shell game and trying to confuse the public. It’s about demonstrating that your company has done some genuine soul searching and made some fundamental changes.
Your brand is the perfect tool to send that message of change and renewal. Rather than running from mistakes, you can use a brand makeover to start a dialogue with your audience. In this day and age, authenticity is an asset scarcer and more valuable than gold.
4. Tap into a new demographic or audience
Social changes can be among the least predictable and hardest events to deal with. But when society shifts, because of something like a pandemic or political turmoil, that means your audience’s hopes, fears and desires are changing too. This can manifest in any number of ways.
And this absolutely calls for a careful re-examination of your target audience. You may need to alter the types of goods and services you offer. But you’ll almost certainly need to change the way you talk to your audience and present your offerings.
It might also be a subtle change or a very local event. A new factory could bring a wave of working-class families to the community. Or a Fortune 500 company might set up a new headquarters in your neighborhood, bringing with it a whole new breed of potential customers.
At the end of the day, it’s about listening to your customers and showing a willingness to adapt to an evolving population.
5. Adapt to new competition in the market
Even when there’s not a major change taking place in society, there’ll still be changes in your market. Business owners retire, new shopping centers open, a new generation of graduates and entrepreneurs enters the field. And as a player on that same field, you’ll have to adjust your strategy accordingly.
Sometimes it’s a national corporate competitor that just decided to set up shop in your neighborhood. Yeah, you’d better do something fast. Or it might just be another local business owner who’s hyper-focused on a certain niche. Do you need to up your game in that niche, or pivot towards a new market segment? Definitely time for some research, and a rebrand.
Remember, you’re not doing business in a vacuum. (And that’s a good thing!) Like any sporting competition, you need need to study the other teams’ strengths and weaknesses. This week you might win with a strong passing game, but next week you may need to overwhelm your opponent with a fast-paced game of bobbing and weaving on the ground.
6. Keep up in a quickly evolving market
In certain industries, like high tech, telecommunications, or biomedical, the market can change radically, almost overnight. A competitor earns a new patent, or Apple releases an unexpected upgrade model. How do you keep from getting left behind?
With a solid brand, you make yourself memorable and ensure that your customers stay loyal. Figure out what it is you do differently and better, and celebrate that. But be prepared to modulate it too. It’s a fine line to walk, maintaining consistency while also keeping up with trends and technology. That’s another reason to talk to a specialist about developing a nimble strategy.
A huge part of brand strategy is crafting a brand persona. When your brand has an attractive personality that meets your customer’s needs, whether by exuding confidence, displaying compassion, or offering authenticity, your audience will remember you differently. So even as technologies change, your consistent personality can differentiate you from the competition.
7. Expand a brand you’ve outgrown
Some of these scenarios might sound a little scary for the small business owner, maybe even catastrophic. But there can also be great reasons why you need to rebrand, like when business is surging. As healthy bodies grow and develop, they need to start buying pants and dresses in different sizes. Same for the growing business.
As your customer base expands and your offerings diversify, your brand image and message need to reflect those changes. Time to step things up with a brand upgrade.
And keep in mind what Jeff Bezos once said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” So if you go from being the friendly corner market when the owner knows every customer by name, and then you start opening new locations all over the state, your customers are going to start thinking about your differently. If you want to maintain control over your brand and your reputation, you’ll need a solid strategy.
Conclusions
If any of these scenarios apply to you, then it’s definitely time for a brand check-in. And very possibly time for a rebrand.
And because it’s 2021 and we’re in the middle, or some say nearing the end, of a global pandemic, I can guarantee that there have been some significant changes in your market.
Dig deeper
To learn more about how to grow your business or practice with winning Brand Strategy, be sure to check out some of our other articles and services.
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