Your marketing team is now telling you that it’s time to design, implement and manage a rebranding program for your business. Are there any words that strike fear into the hearts of dedicated business operators? Well, perhaps there are, but for many a rebrand is still something to be concerned about, and seemingly for good reason.
First, it’s just a little bit heartbreaking to let go of a brand that perhaps you designed and created yourself just because your team is now telling you that it’s necessary. Second, if you perceive that there’s nothing seriously wrong with the brand, then it can be hard to let go of the past. While these are valid thoughts, they are sadly misplaced. Below are all the best reasons one should never fear a rebrand:
Reason 1: A Successful Rebrand Doesn’t Shed Your Core Values
While it’s understandable that one might fear losing a sense of one’s core brand values when undergoing a rebrand, it’s actually not the case. A rebrand doesn’t mean whatsoever that you have to throw out every part of your original brand to create a brand-new one. Those with experience in rebranding know very well that the best policy is always to try and retain the best of an original brand and reflect it in a new one.
Rebranding is more about refreshing an image to allow space for additional and reformed values to be reflected where an old brand may have felt somewhat limiting. It can also be used to mark the start of a new period in your brand’s development (see point 4). None of these things, however, point to losing your original core values.
Reason 2: Some Initial Backlash from Existing Customers is Inevitable
Whatever you do to your original brand, regardless of how minor, is going to receive at least some backlash from your existing customer base. Virtually any change you make to your product or service will attract a modicum of the same backlash, so does that mean you’ll be proceeding through your brand’s life without changing a single thing, ever?
Knowing that some backlash is always going to happen anyway should hopefully embolden you to take the bull by the horns and get on with a rebranding campaign with confidence. For every 1 older customer you might slightly annoy, you could enthuse 10 more new ones, which brings us to the next point.
Reason 3: Helps You to Connect with New Customers
A brand redesign is about attracting new, younger customers who may struggle to connect with your original brand for whatever reason. Building an updated brand that speaks to younger people isn’t just some cynical commercial move, it’s a positive step toward securing your future customer base for at least the next decade, and possibly even longer.
You’d struggle to find any brand anywhere in the world more than 100 years’ old that retains its entirely original branding from its founding days. With each update, a new generation of customers is brought into the fold.
Reason 4: A New Look is an Exciting New Start
When you’re rebranding, you’re indicating that your company and brand have reached a significant milestone in their development. This likely means that you now offer a far wider range of products and services than you did at the beginning, or that you’re about to open an entirely new wing of your company. A new brand can help to reflect that.
Reason 5: Draws Added Attention to Your Older Products and Services
Finally, when you rebrand yourself and your business, it actually has the added bonus of drawing more attention to your existing products and services. Think about those new customers we mentioned above who didn’t initially identify with your brand, but after refreshing it they just might, and realise their error in not getting to know your brand sooner.
Image: https://pixabay.com/vectors/market-advertising-seo-neon-5000694/
