Photo by Matthew Henry from Burst
Revitalise relaunch rebrand
There are many reasons why a company would need to revitalise, relaunch or rebrand. These projects can have many approaches from a simple brand identity refresh to a major shift in brand strategy, positioning and targeting.
Revitalise to increase your brand's relevance
Brands need to be relevant in their chosen segment by staying on top of changes in customer needs and their market landscape. A brand that loses relevance is in danger of losing awareness, recall, salience and emotional connection which will lead to loss of market share. In these cases finding a way to revitalise your brand instead of a rebrand will help you to maintain your status while building a stronger brand and sales strategy
Meeting competitive challenges
Aggressive competitive plays, disruptive new entrants, competitors merging are just some of the challenges that your brand may face. In each of these cases re-evaluating your brand strategy gives you a framework to decide how to best respond. For example you may decide to introduce new products, retarget or reposition your brand or change your sales strategy and channels.
International expansion
Expanding into new geographies demands a fundamental rethink of your brand strategy; what worked well in one country may not work in another culture and society. You will need to look anew at customers, segmentation, targeting, sales channels and so on. This will lead you to decisions about changing your current brand strategy, launching a new brand or revitalising your brand.
Mergers and acquisitions
When two organisations join there are always two audiences, both internal and external to communicate with. This always requires some hard decisions about which brands to keep, which to kill, which to keep as the dominant brand and which to change. Whatever the decision, brand actions will inevitably have to follow.
When you disrupt the market
In many markets technological innovation can lead to market disruption (though it is rarely the sole sustaining force in market dominance). In some cases your technological innovation could impact your positioning, messaging, targeting and customer selection, precipitating a change in your brand strategy and decisions about whether to revitalise or relaunch.
When you are forced to reposition
Repositioning a brand may be driven by unopposable changes in your market landscape, such as regulatory shifts, the end of patent protection or the emergence of a particularly powerful competitor. Whatever the cause, it is not a decision to be taken lightly, since it will affect customer targeting, product or service design, messaging, sales channels and so on and will require you to reconsider your entire brand strategy.
When you need to reduce operating costs
Many companies, either by poor portfolio management or by acquisition and merger, end up with a large number of product brands. Often they find are no longer relevant or profitable and should be either ended, relaunched or revitalised. It may be that you have identified excessive business development and operational costs in your business. These situations might cause you to change your brand architecture but they all have implications for your brand strategy.
Your business is growing fast
As companies grow they typically find that they have moved away from their original segments into new ones. For example, a firm that starts off targeting a small geographical area can find itself receiving international enquiries or a company that targets a specific vertical could find itself being pulled into neighbouring verticals. The appropriate response (revitalisation, segmentation or relaunch) depends on your ambitions for your business.
You have no choice but to rebrand
Very rarely legal issues such as trademark or patent disputes force a company to rebrand. Since this means giving up most of the brand equity and value that you have created, this is one of the very few situations in which a responsible brand strategist would contemplate a rebrand. In this case you would need to be open to the possibility of major changes to your brand strategy as well.
Your brand reputation is damaged beyond repair
In some cases a firm may have suffered such a damaging blow to its reputation that a rebrand is essential to restoring customer confidence and employee morale. Again this is something that should only be considered as a last resort.
Revitalise, relaunch or rebrand methodology
- Evaluation of your business objectives before making a decision on whether to revitalise, relaunch or rebrand and, working together, we can test and challenge your business rationale.
- A thorough brand audit on all of the brands that will be affected to establish their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
- In some situations we will also need to work together on a brand contribution analysis to determine what contribution the brand makes to profits, costs, revenues, customer retention and resource demands.
- Produce a draft plan of action and workshop through this with you to refine it and define your brand action plan.
Revitalise, relaunch or rebrand deliverables
Through a series of workshops and interviews with relevant stakeholders and a brand audit we will produce a documented plan that contains the recommended plan of action, together with an outline of the steps to be taken.
My 5-point Client Satisfaction Promise
- Your brand renovation plan will be customised to your business and its unique challenges.
- Your investment and your payment schedule will be clear. If I can save you money by using what you already have, I won’t reinvent the wheel.
- We’ll discuss, agree on and document each step in the process. If I need you to pull together data or documents I’ll ask you before the relevant step begins.
- The work plan will comprise a number of milestones that will be clearly identified. We’ll review the project at the end of each milestone so that you can regularly evaluate the progress of the project.
- Sometimes the unexpected happens. If something extra is requested or required I’ll ensure you’re fully informed about the implications before you commit.
