New year, new brand identity?

One thing on your to-do list this month may be a brand identity redesign.

Perhaps you've been considering this for a while, or perhaps you see a new year as the perfect opportunity to refresh what your brand looks and feels like.

Perhaps you’ve read Byron Sharp’s, ‘How Brands Grow’, and you feel like you’re missing the distinctive elements you need to help consumers notice, recognise and recall your brand.

But I will let you into the secret of how the world's most valuable brands will be approaching this.?

They will not be changing what they look like?unless?they want to signal that they are?doing something different and want to stand for something different in their customer’s minds.

Redesigning your logo and website is a sign to your customers that something about you has changed. Identifying this change should be your first step.?

Your brand identity - your logo, your colour palette, your fonts, your imagery, etc. -?these are all signals to your customer of what your brand is about.?

It should not be redone just because you've got time on your hands.??Or just because you’re bored of the old one.?

It should be done to align with what you want to stand for – your brand strategy.?Everything you put out there - whether it's visual or verbal – needs to help to communicate this to your customers.

Take Burger King’s redesign this time last year.?

There were strategic reasons for the redesign and clear attributes it was intended to communicate. As the lead designer,?Lisa Smith, executive creative director at Jones Knowles Ritchie stated:

"The new logo pays homage to the brand's heritage with a refined design that's confident, simple and fun....We wanted to use design to help close the gap between the negative perceptions a lot of people have of fast food, and the positive reality of our food story by making the brand feel less synthetic, artificial and cheap, and more real, crave-able and tasty," she continued. "Put simply, to make the Burger King brand and the food even more craveable."

The new colour palette reflected Burger King’s commitment to natural ingredients: the fast-food chain recently announced it would be banning 120 artificial ingredients from its menus.

This time last year GM also launched a redesigned identity – for only the 5th?time?in 113 years. It was?accompanied by an “EVerybody In” electric vehicle campaign, which laid out its plans to help reduce emissions and build an “all-electric future”.??

The new logo features the automaker’s “gm” initials in an underlined ‘m’ as a nod to its Ultium battery cell platform and the ‘blue skies’ gradients?“evokes the clean skies of a zero-emissions future.”

And what are they doing to support this identity change? Investing $27bn in EV products over the next four years, as well as launching 30 new EVs globally by the of 2025.

As GM executive director of Global Industrial design Sharon Gauci?stated :?“At every step we wanted to be intentional and deliberate.”

Start with brand strategy, not brand signals.

So before you jump into a redesign,?just take one step back.??

The most valuable brands start with their brand strategy.?

Your brand strategy is your answers to some critical questions.

1. WHY do you exist?
2. WHO are you and HOW do you do things?
3. HOW do you look, feel and sound?
4. WHAT do you do?

These simple questions are the blueprint for any strong brand.?

Answering?WHY?you exist is critical to determine the value you truly offer your customers, to inspire your employees, and to guide innovation.

Answering?WHO?you are helps you codify your culture, explains the values and beliefs that underpin your development to date, and guides recruitment of new team members.

Answering?HOW?you do things helps employees understand the behaviours you're looking for - guiding performance reviews and helping them understand how to live up to your why and your who.

Finding words to describe?HOW?you look, feel and sound are critical before you embark upon any redesign or rewrite, particularly if you're going to outsource this work.?

Finally, answering?WHAT?you do describes the industry you are in and helps people to understand the products and services you're offering.

The first question any good designer, copywriter, marketer or social media expert will ask you is what your brand stands for, and hence what you want any redesign or rewrite to communicate.??(And if they don't ask you this question then look around for somebody else who does!)??

The best executors of your brand?approach your brand strategically, just as you need to do before embarking upon any redesign.?

If you don’t know where to start, then my free course, Brand Strategy in 7 Simple Steps can get you going.??Access it here.