Rebranding is painful.
We’re talking pulling-teeth-while-sitting-on-nails painful.
How do we know? Well, we’ve been doing brand change projects for the past 20+ years. And we’ve also recently rebranded (we wanted to experience the pain for ourselves).
We have an approach that we know works (and even makes our clients happy, despite all the challenges of change). But we’ve never actually mapped out that approach as a ‘how to’ piece…until now.
So, here is the long-overdue, step-by-step guide to guiding your SME through a rebrand. If you’re looking to hop on that ride anytime soon, we hope this makes the journey that bit less painful…
Step 1: Sort your drivers for change
In short, why do you want to rebrand? What pain is the business feeling that you believe will be alleviated (at least in part) by changes to the brand. Here are the most common ones that we hear:
• ‘We’re stagnating and need to do something about it’
• ‘We’re going through big internal changes’
• ‘We’re coming out the other end of an M&A deal’
• ‘We’re making changes to our strategy/business model’
• ‘We need to move before we get left behind’
Alongside defining the driver, mark out the end destination. Where will this new brand take you? What outcomes are you looking for – both immediate and longer-term?
Step 2: Find your experts & set the parameters
Whether it’s a creative agency, in-house marketing team or a trusted freelancer – a rebrand should be led by an individual (or small team) who have done this before and know what they’re doing. It’s unlikely the CEO, the Board, the CEO’s mate, or the co-founder’s son-in-law will pass the test.
With your crack team in place, you’ll need to agree a brief. What are the challenges the new brand needs to address? What are we open to changing (and what aren’t we)? Who will be involved in the project, and in what capacity?
Step 3: Uncover the insights
The strategy. The messaging. The creative. All of these are decisions that need to be made, elements of the brand to be tied down. But how do you know you’re making the right decision? In one sense, the answer is simple: insights. And preferrably research-informed insights (as opposed to what the Head of Sales says are “all the insights you’ll need”).
You should be looking for insights from the following stakeholders of your brand:
• Company leaders and employees (What are you really best at?)
• Customers current and future (What do they value most?)
• Competitors in your space (What are they not delivering on?)
Focus groups. Workshops. Online surveys. Customer interviews. Desk-based research. These are all ways of uncovering the insights you’ll need to make the tough decisions around the new brand.
Step 4: Develop the strategy
With those juicy insights in hand, it’s tempting to jump ahead to the external-facing stuff. But how do you know what messages to craft? Or what tone of voice the brand should adopt? Or what design style it should incorporate?
Without a clear strategy for the brand, you’ll be making decisions on a whim (“I like the colour purple” and “Those words work for me”). At said & done, we have a secret weapon at our disposal. It’s called the ‘brand onion’ (named for the layers that we peel back one-at-a-time, not because the process brings tears to our eyes).
At the core, is your organisational purpose (why you exist beyond making money) – which either needs defining or keeping in mind as you move forward. The next layer is your brand strategy, which consists of the following:
• Audience (Who is the brand here for?)
• Positioning (What will the brand be known for?)
• Personality (How will the brand show up?)
• Architecture (How will our sub-brands interact?)
N.B. The eagle eyed among you might have spotted those first two are an essential part of any marketing strategy (business, brand, marketing…it’s all one strategy, in truth)
Step 5: Crack the creative
Hoorah! You’ve managed to pin down a clear strategy for the brand (and can now make decisions on creative without relying on the whims of the designer/copywriter, business owner or Geoff from Finance).
Assuming for a moment the brand name isn’t changing (that’s a mini-tornado all by itself), there are two main pieces of the creative puzzle you will need to crack for the refreshed brand:
• Brand messaging – what to say (the thinking) and how to say it (the words)
• Visual identity – the system that makes up your visual brand (logo, colours, fonts, imagery, etc)
To crack this, you’ll not only need to be working with professional copywriters and designers. You will need to be constantly asking the strategy questions: “Does this deliver on our brand positioning?” and “Does this reflect our chosen brand personality?”
Step 6: Bring it to life
Websites. Sales decks. Explainer videos. Social media platforms. Signage & livery. It’s time to crack on with the task of updating/recreating all the ‘stuff’ that will bring your brand to the world. As before, your challenge is to remain true to the previous step (in this case, checking that what is being created is using the brand messaging and visual identity – and using it well!).
Hand-in-hand with those brand assets are the marketing activities. The email newsletters, launch posts, lead gen campaign, event presence – whatever you are doing to create awareness and interest with your target audience, it will need to reflect the new brand.
Step 7: Check it’s actually working
We’ll let you in on a trade secret: refreshing a brand is really an act of faith. You can double down on research, sense-check the strategy, even focus group the creative…but at the end of the day, you will really only know whether it’s going to work until after you’ve launched.
Our advice? Give it 3-6 months, and then ask yourself (and your customers) some honest questions, like:
• How has your perception of the brand changed?• Does that perception match our intended positioning?
• Have we increased awareness amongst our target audience?
• Are we seeing an increase in the number of leads generated?
And there you have it…
Your simple, step-by-step guide to smashing your SME rebrand.
If you’re looking to work with said & done on a brand project, this is what you can expect. If you’re set to work with someone else, feel free to use this as a stick to beat them with.
Who knows, you might even find some joy in the midst of the pain.
