Five Common Indicators That It Is Time To Invest in Your Brand

An excerpt from Conquer Your Rebrand , written by Bill Kenney ??

I’ve narrowed this list of indicators to the five most common ones that Focus Lab has encountered since our inception. Combined, they account for roughly 95 percent of the brand engagements we tackle. As such, they’ve captured nearly all markets and client sizes, and represent the most prevailing pain points and brand dilemmas our clients run into. If you’re experiencing any of these indicators, you’re reading the right book. If you see your organization experiencing one or more, it’s definitely time to act.?

This first indicator is the most common. True to its definition, an inflection point is a time of significant change—a turning point. Inflection points vary for every organization. Here are a few pivotal turning points that signal a clear YES to the question, “Is now the time to invest in brand?”

• The position of your organization is changing.?
• Your organization is adopting a new name.?
• A big culture shift is underway.
• Your brand architecture is broken.
• A significant merger or acquisition is taking place.
• There’s been a major change to strategic vision.
• You’re significantly diversifying your product or service stack.

These are a few very powerful, transformative moments in any business. Some happen because of successful business growth, while others occur at any time in an organization’s life cycle. I’ll say confidently that these instances can and should trigger brand action. I’ll even argue that these moments are so fundamental and impactful to your organization, you cannot avoid a brand investment of some kind when they happen.

Duct tape and glue is a close second in what we see and work through with clients. These situations arise when a brand prioritizes short-term thinking, but sacrifices long-term goals. It focuses on making things work now, versus making everything work better.?

Maybe you began with brand clarity, but over time things became disheveled. It could be because your company dove right into product marketing, and never resolved your brand in the first place. Or maybe it’s been so long since you looked at your brand that it’s impossible to tell what’s official from what’s not.?

Every business travels a different path. But a patchwork application without a solid brand foundation leaves other staples of your business (marketing, product decisions, customer experience, company vision, etc.) stuck in a tiring game of whack-a-mole. Decisions become reactive, and lack direction. What should be energizing becomes exhausting. Here’s how this plays out within an organization:

• Brand assets are severely limited at best. At worst, they’re nonexistent.
• Teams create and implement assets based on departmental needs and guesswork, rather than organizational strategy and direction.
• You never defined a clear messaging framework, and communications come across as random or speculative.

It’s hard to capture momentum when duct tape and glue are holding your brand together. Your businesses cannot grow, evolve, or improve in this scenario. To your market, these indicators signal weakness. To customers, they muddy the picture of your organization. In the end, these indicators create distrust both externally and internally. Whether there ever was a brand strategy is beside the point, because inconsistency has become the rule. If you are struggling with these issues, it is time to invest in brand.?

A lack of consistency is closely related to the duct tape and glue scenario. While duct tape and glue is more about scrapping assets together based on in-the-moment needs, the lack of consistency points toward how you apply the assets you possess.?

A discontinuous or non-existent brand presence creates a non-entity—a rudderless ship. Consistency builds loyalty, recognition, and trust; together, these lead to strong brand equity. Perhaps your vision, mission, and positioning are compelling, and you’ve created strong marketing outputs that reflect them. That’s a big win! However, if your company’s visuals and voice don’t reflect these appropriately, you’re undermining the work that led to your vision, mission, and positioning in the first place. How are a few ways this scenario plays out within an organization:

• Your brand visuals clash with your brand voice (or vice versa).?
• You’re upholding your brand standards in your customer experience, but not in your social media presence.
• Your website embraces your brand, but your office houses relics of an older brand iteration.?
• Your vision presents a culture of A, but you operate as a culture of B.
• Marketing efforts apply your brand assets and messaging haphazardly.

A recent survey from Marq (2021, Brand Consistency Report ), a brand templating platform, captured this point well with concrete data. I wish I could say the results are surprising:

• The upside of consistency: 68 percent of respondents reported that consistency in their brand execution contributed from 10 to more than 20 percent increase in their revenue growth.
• Still, 31 percent said that they follow brand guidelines selectively.
• Meanwhile, 77 percent said that they witness off brand content creation within their organization, with 22 percent of this happening monthly.?

Imagine a Disney World employee speaking in a snarky, unempathetic voice, or Apple using a childish font on a random page within their website for no clear reason. Those inconsistencies damage brands, and affect how the public perceives them, even if it’s a small, one-off experience. Unfortunately, looking at the data above, you can see that these situations are rarely one-offs. The bottom line is that if a brand wants to be successful, it cannot afford inconsistency. Closing this gap—no matter how small—will pay for itself.?

Confusion shows up like a culminating trickle-down effect from one or more of the three challenges above. Think about it: if you lack solid brand footing; if you’re using duct tape and glue; or if you’re inconsistent across brand touchpoints, what else would you expect but confusion? How can anyone—customers, partners, employees—know who you are or what you stand for when you’re constantly saying something different, or nothing at all??

But here’s an interesting thing about confusion: It can be a result of one or more of the pain points above, and can also cause them. That’s one of the main reasons I’ve included confusion as its own entry. It’s not just a symptom; it can be an underlying factor. When it is a factor, it signifies an error in positioning, which is central to brand perception.

We run into aspects of confusion often with clients—situations where people see themselves as one thing, but struggle to communicate it. Organizations with complex technical or product-centric offerings are even more susceptible to this pain point. Here are a few ways that confusion plays out within the organization:

• Your internal culture is either disconnected or contrary to how the organization represents itself, or how others view you.?
• Your position in the market is unclear, which leaves customers passing you over, not realizing you may be the perfect fit for them.?
• Your product is at the top of your industry, but your business is unable to grow market share.

If you haven’t spent the time focusing on clarifying your position, or identifying how your offering lines up with customers’ needs, then you are letting the market write its own narrative. Outside voices will construct their own assumptions about how you may or may not benefit them. Your appeal will never go beyond the surface level, and no one will know the true value of your offering, culture, or mission.

The first four indicators signal some brand problems that arise. This fifth indicator is different. It’s a result of growth and maturity. Maybe your organization has reached a point where a rebrand will allow you to capture your true personality and aspirations. Perhaps some key decisions have panned out, and now you’re experiencing accelerated growth in all the right places. Whatever the case may be, if your business is evolving but your brand is lagging behind, it’s time to capture who you are and want to be by investing in your brand.?

This pain point has extra relevance for me. Our agency had this exact realization shortly after we wrapped up our first decade in business. On the surface, we were doing just fine. Nothing was critically broken. Our customers loved working with us, our values were clear, and our processes were tight. However, even with the level of progress we’d achieved, we were suffering from some fallout from our growth. Here are a few ways this played out for us, and how it might play out for you:??

• Our brand still represented our current self, but not our future vision.?
• Our position had become more and more focused, but we weren’t conveying this evolution externally.?
• Our visuals weren’t bad, but they didn’t capture the expertise we now championed with our clients.?
• While our voice was still on-brand, our messaging didn’t speak directly to our customers in the way we knew it could.?

At the time, we definitely identified with the irony that exists in the parable of the cobbler and his kid: We were making awesome shoes for clients, but our own footwear needed some help. Perhaps you identify with a similar notion: Your brand improves things for others, but downplays the importance of doing the same for yourself. If you can look at yourself and see that you need new shoes, then it’s time to invest in your brand.

One last note on this final pain point: When we realized that we needed to rebrand, we didn’t throw out years of equity. Instead, we leaned into a number of highly valuable aspects of our organization as we iterated toward the future. This can be the case for you as well. Keeping the elements that make you special, like your beloved culture and values, are essential to the rebrand process. First, you must willingly invest in your brand. Once you do, you’re staking claim to the future your growth has led you toward.

Looking for more insights into the rebrand process?

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