Heard of rebranding a company, right!
Wondering what it is?
What is rebranding a company – An introduction
Rebranding a company is one of the most advantageous trends today. As the business scenario is getting highly cutthroat these days, devising unique marketing strategies is necessary to stop losing your potential consumers to your competitors.
Rebranding strategies are used mainly to change the entire image of a company, giving a new look and feel to its brand appearance, name change, website revitalization or new packaging of products and services, etc. According to this process, a business can typically either change its brand design elements or give a new meaning to its entire marketing mission.
The concept of rebranding is actually to provide a new meaning to the overall structure of the company with an intention to present it as new.
A proper rebranding process usually influences the customer’s perception of the service and product of a company. In most cases, companies take rebranding efforts to modernize the brand and provide it a more relevant connotation according to its customer’s needs.
Types of rebranding a business
Rebranding is done mainly for two types of requirements-
Proactive rebranding: This type is used when a company identifies the scope of growth. It is then they try to innovate and indulge in new businesses to reconnect with their existing customers and attract new users.
In this kind of rebranding campaign, a company can change its logo as well as the name of the company also. The new logo would reflect the company’s renewed commitment to develop value and maintain the global standards.
Reactive rebranding: Such rebranding happens when a company faces a situation where the existing brand has been discontinued either due to merging & acquisition, legal issues, to cast off any recent negative publicity or to create own niche amidst tough competition and get a fresh persona.
When a company faces bankruptcy, it can be sold or acquired by a company of high stature and merged with it. Eventually, rebranding happens with the new name, new logo and customers come to know about it as a fresh new company with previous products.
Why rebrand: 5 reasons for rebranding your company
The primary purpose of rebranding marketing might vary from one organization to another. The process takes shape depending upon the objective of a company and what an organization expects to achieve in future.
Following are the major reasons why a company might consider rebranding:
- When an Organization Fails to Keep up with Ever-Growing Market Trends
Several organizations, whether big or small might lag behind with the ever-changing marketing trends. They might fail to catch-up with the developing industry progressions. But to be visible amid competitors, every marketer must have a clear idea about the particular marketing trends. Monitoring these trends will enable marketers to know exactly when to proceed with the rebranding campaign.
As we live in an age of social media and easy access to information gathering on recent trends, an enterprise must follow those marketing trends to appease its customers. Enterprises should make their existing users understand that they are no different than their competitors. Hence, an organization needs to develop a dedicated infrastructure for monitoring and evolving with market trends.
Moreover, a company might rebrand itself if it had entered the market recently and wanted to align its brand with the new market scenario.
- When You Feel You Don’t Stand Out from Peers
Rebranding becomes necessary when you find that your market has too many competitors selling the same product and services like you. Moreover, they also follow a principle somewhat similar to you. The worst part, your peers are using the same name as yours making it even more difficult to find you amidst your competitors.
- When You Understand Customers Needs Have Evolved
Rebranding strategy plan becomes essential when suddenly you realize that the needs of your customers have evolved. Consumer habit may change owing to excellent tech innovation and this can be a driving force for you to adopt different marketing strategies. According to several top brands going for rebranding admit that the process of rebranding is easier than that of going for remarketing.
- If a Company Faces Negative Image Publicity
When a company faces problems like negative PR, there’s scope of branding and rebranding to lead the counter impression to positive opportunity. Any establishment can face negative image publicity if the consumers receive awful products/services, has terrible customer experience or any other issue that has seriously curbed the reputation attention. Rebranding eventually would help a company to revive its lost business credibility, reputation and brand.
- Negative feedback is harmful to the brand identity
It’s how you react as a business owner to fixing the problems that can make a significant difference in customer reaction and perception of your company. A negative issue can be a major company PR problem or become an unexpected opportunity to build on your brand promise.
- Rebranding Necessary During Merging and Acquisition
Merging and acquisition of weak financial organizations by larger establishments are standard practice in the industry. When companies merge or acquire a new brand, rebranding becomes essential to represent the new combined brand identity. Existing and new potential consumers come to know about the change and they take purchase decision accordingly.
How should you rebrand?
Companies planning to go for rebranding are always at loss of thoughts. Most of the times they fail to find ways.
Here are some of the successful steps to rebranding a company. These are processes used by the successful companies:
- Research About Your Company and Target Clients
When you plan to rebrand, your first step would be to conduct independent research on your entire company and your clients. Therefore, the moment you decide to enter a new market, you need to conduct thorough research about your company, how it will be after rebranding and your new target clients as well. The goal is essential to understand the difference between your current brand perception and your renewed competencies. Without this research, your objective of rebranding will not be served properly.
- Focus on Creating Your Brand Identity
Creating a brand identity is crucial for every business. Hence, whenever you are faced with a situation of rebranding, you must concentrate on building your brand identity. It is a strategy where you need to develop certain visual elements to communicate your brand image- your enterprise name, logo, business card design, tagline, stationery, etc. The idea is to implement your brand features consistently across all of your marketing materials. Your brand identity should be something that customers can clearly perceive, especially in your products. This is why branded custom packaging for your products is essential for your rebranding.
- Invest in Building Your Website and Online Presence
Company websites play a significant role in brand building. The portals are the single most essential communication and business development tools that portray a company’s mission and vision to the audience. A well-maintained website provides your brand to gain a valuable online presence in this digital marketing era.
The task of rebranding remains incomplete without recreating your website. Besides social media, you should also invest some time in website rebuilding and receive a valuable online presence. You can outsource design team for more effective results.
- Revamp All Your Marketing Collaterals
Marketing Collaterals are among the best tools to attract and communicate about your brand message to your potential and existing clientele. While rebranding you cannot miss out on those. In your next step, renew all your marketing materials, give a new look to your brochures, fliers, posters and other collaterals that are essential for making your brand prominent.
Importance of rebranding in 2019
Now it’s clear from the above context that rebranding of a company becomes essential on several occasions.
With the new year swooping in bringing fresh promises, establishing more modern methods to become a prominent brand is necessary.
One of the major questions that cross your mind- is rebranding worth?
Are you still mixed up with what should be your stand if you carry out rebranding project plan?
Then take a look at the benefits of rebranding in this present era. How will the process of rebranding exponentially help you to achieve huge client-base and what good it would be for your brand within the industry?
Remember rebranding might incorporate a small change of logo or transformation of minor things, but these most insignificant changes can make a big difference.
Here are the benefits of rebranding a company:
- Gives a new direction to your business
Change is a continuous process and with the world transforming rapidly at your doorstep your business also needs to grow. Therefore, rebranding can help you add a new perspective to your business. Whether you are a large organization or small you need to communicate with your clients’ unique needs and aspirations. Thus, your brand should match with the growing demands. What worked years before for your company would not work in these present days. With the rebranding, your company can get a new direction of its business and succeed overnight.
- Reflect a renewed business image
Successful rebranding strategies can change the overall perceptions of your business in the eyes of your existing customers. Additionally, there will be a new brand image which will, in turn, attract your new customers as well. Experts term the overall branding as your organization’s ‘shop window’ to communicate with current customers, employees and your target market.
- Enables you to gain an advantage over peers
Rebranding would enable your enterprise to evolve among those ambitious companies. There might be instances when your present branding mirrors your close competitor’s image. Or cases can even be that; you would want to simplify your identity to make your industry image easier for customers to understand. The process of rebranding would add individuality to your brand and make you look different from your peers.
- Rebranding makes you consistent in your business
Being prominent in the industry requires thoughtful planning. You might be a popular organization in your niche, but you might not be quite consistent with your brand image. Probably your branding is also not compatible across different platforms. Hence, you should consider the process of rebranding. With rejuvenating your brand image, your company would come back to the track and come up with new brand guidelines.
- With rebranding become a valuable company
Marketers consider rebranding as a measured business decision. They are of the view that the process of changing your logo or refreshing your brand image would add some value to your business. Needless to say, brand value is a tangible asset and hence rebranding gives you the scope of engaging more loyal audience boosting sales and business opportunities.
Company Rebrand Checklist – Things to Consider When Rebranding
Rebranding can be fruitful only when you follow the rules and guidelines of the entire process. Although beneficial, yet it’s a risky affair. You need to be quite informative of all the processes.
Here are certain dos and don’ts which you need to follow and have a successful rebranding process.
Dos:
- Remember to create a tag-line that grab your existing and potential customers’ attention.
- Do define each element of your brand compass for adding value to your company.
- Do try to be different than your compared to your competitors. Create a visible difference.
Don’ts:
- Don’t dissatisfy your old audience and alienate them from your brand.
- Don’t create an image that you can’t maintain.
- Don’t forget to do extensive research on the current market trends and present requirement after rebranding.
Case Studies of Rebranding
Modern Bread
The rebranding story of Modern Bread is also quite impressive. Marketers planning to use this strategy can develop their plan accordingly by taking lessons from the brand story. Modern Bread came into being when Modern Foods exchanged hands. The company planned to provide a refreshed brand identity and present a vibrant identity by targeting younger audiences with newer variants. Modern Bread is thus the best example of benefiting from new trends to regain the lost recognition.
Vodafone
It’s another historically successful story of rebranding. In 2007, Vodafone acquired Hutchinson and in this regard, the process of rebranding also became quite fast. They had set up strong promotional strategies to keep the existing customers satisfied and also planned to attract newer clients.
They made their customer-care centers to SIM card packets -red. A color o grab people’s attention instantly.
Old Spice
Old Spice suffered the problem of low sales, reduced consumer interest and exorbitant competition in the early 2000s. The company’s target market was only the older men and this led to losing them in their business. Finally, the company decided to change their target audience and planned to reach the target groups. They revamped their marketing and advertising campaign by appointing young and handsome celebrity role models as their brand face. In the present day, the company has shifted itself to a brand associated with legacy and confidence.
Apple
Apple presents one of the best rebranding stories in this contemporary period. In 1990s Apple faced problems of low sales, low consumer involvement and huge competition within the industry. The company started losing existing and potential customers eventually. But things took a different turn when in 1997 Steve Jobs took over the company and began the process of rebranding. The company started to launch innovative new products with minimalism and modernity combined with creative marketing and advertising campaigns. The rest is history; Apple is one of the leading names in the industry. It has a vast customer base and it’s the best example of a dramatic shift.
While rebranding, get the best service on design, promotion and brand building from LogoDesignTeam. Visit us for expert guidance on your logo creation or website establishment and acquire an excellent online presence.
