Are you considering a company rebrand? Perhaps your current brand no longer reflects the values of your audience, or your target demographic has changed, or your service offerings have changed over time.

Knowing how to rebrand can be an exciting time for some and an unfortunate step for others if you go about it haphazardly. Needing to rebrand is not necessarily a bad sign. Many companies do it successfully; from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. Whatever the reason for a rebrand, make sure you and your brand emerge successfully!

Oftentimes, a rebrand is an indication that your company has grown beyond its previous identity and is now ready to push upwards. Rebranding provides an opportunity to strengthen your company’s presence and image in the eyes of your customers. But be careful not to go too far left or you could lose them altogether.

So, how do you plan and execute a successful rebrand? Glad you asked. In this article we’ve put together a few important steps in the form of questions and answers and examples to help guide you through your rebranding process. Rebranding can be an intense process, so you should first decide the ‘why’ and ‘how’ before you dive into changing things.

01. Does Your Brand Tell A Story?

This isn’t a rebrand, it’s a new company, but their storytelling is just too good to pass up. GoldiBlox is not about Goldilocks and the three bears; you know – more princess type stuff. It’s much bigger and more profound than that.

GoldiBlox is an award-winning children’s multimedia company that has started a movement to change the gender ratio in engineering. It’s about empowering little girls and their parents with knowledge and engineering-based toys to show them that princesses can be engineers too.

If you watched the Superbowl, you undoubtedly saw Goldiblox’s ad about – girls are bored and tired of their options, so they take their “girl toys”, disrupt a beauty pageant, and build a rocket together to fly their girl toys to the moon.

GoldiBlox’s slogan “Buy GoldieBlox, because your daughter is so much more than a princess” – we couldn’t agree more!

02. Will a Rebrand Comprise Your Brand Equity?

Brand equity refers to the commercial value that derives from consumer perception of the brand name of a particular product or service, rather than from the product or service itself. Essentially, it’s the value of having a well-known brand name and reputation that people trust. Theoretically, companies with higher brand equity earn more money.

So, will your customers be confused about your visual identity and reputation if you rebrand? We all know how people like consistency and will buck against change, so you definitely don’t want to lose that trust and stellar reputation you have spent so many years building.

Your goal when rebranding is not go in a completely different direction, but rather make changes that your customers support and identity with. Netflix did a good job of this in March. Some customers didn’t really notice the change right away; although we noticed it immediately.

Netflix stated that the new logo will save them millions of dollars because they are using their own ‘Netflix Sans’ font that was developed in-house at Netflix and designed in partnership with font foundry Dalton Maag international typeface designers. Previously, Netflix was paying a license fee to use a Gotham typeface.

But, because Netflix didn’t really publicize any of the rebranding, some people did think that their ‘N’ was the new logo version the red, flat font design (logo in center). The ‘N’ is actually Netflix’s new icon that will be incorporated into their mobile apps.

03. Can You Identify An Actual Problem With Your Current Brand?

We all know too well the old adage: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. If you’re just feeling that it’s time for a change and just want to do something different with no quantifiable reason to rebrand, it’s probably safe to say that you should not do it. A good example of this reasoning is Gap.

Gap swooped out it’s sleek tall lettering logo with blue background in 2010 for the one you see on the right-hand side above. As professional content creators and website design and branding agency, our first thought when we saw that was: ‘what the heck?’. It looked like someone just opened up Microsoft Word and threw it together.

As we mentioned earlier in this article, branding can be an intense process. To get it right the first time and decide years later that you want to change it for no other reason that ‘just because’ often leads regret, as in the case with Gap. Successful rebranding takes many hours of planning and research for successful executing to avoid a upset like this one.

Wrapping It Up

If you are ready to give rebranding a try, Envisager Studio can develop a brand kit for your business to enhance your visual branding. Just give us a call at (858) 874-6528 or request a consult. Remember, your logo is not your brand and if you want your brand to really stick, you will need to clearly define what it’s role is in the broader scheme of things.

Hazel Burgess

Hazel Burgess
FOUNDER/SEO DIRECTOR

Hazel is the Founder & SEO Director at Envisager Studio, a premier website design agency specializing in WordPress website design, development and internet marketing. In her spare time, she writes about search engine optimization, website design, and internet marketing.