Six steps to a successful rebrand

A few weeks ago I shared an article about why we must stop designing tech for tech’s sake , and used it as an opportunity to talk about a telco I am working with: Odido Netherlands, formerly known as T-Mobile Netherlands. The company has gone through a full rebrand, changing its name, updating its look and feel, and rethinking what its purpose really is – which is ultimately to make technology more humane, and design products and services around people.

Having also worked at Sunrise in Switzerland, EE in the UK and Orange in several countries around Europe, this wasn’t my first rebranding rodeo, and I don’t suppose it will be my last. So I thought I would cast my mind back over all these experiences, and share what I have learned along the way.

You will probably still bear the emotional scars if you have gone through this process, because rebranding can be a real trial by fire. Identifying what you truly stand for. (How difficult can it be? Very.) Getting consensus on that. (Ditto.) Reviewing concepts that make you wonder if the designer got the right brief. Things going back to the drawing board. Again. And again. Wanting to fire your brand agency, your brand director, yourself, and anyone else who ever thought this was a good idea. And doing it all over again.

Finally, if you are lucky – which really means if you have put the work in to get it right – the moment comes when everything falls into place. You have an identity and a physical manifestation of it that everyone in your company can get behind. You then spend a few nail-biting months – not to mention a lot of cash – getting everything ready for the big reveal. Blood, sweat, and tears are shed, sleep is lost, and stress levels go through the roof.

Then you launch and – again, if you’ve judged it right – it’s like Christmas, the fourth of July, the World Cup final, Mardi Gras and Diwali all at the same time inside your company. Everything is new and exciting, the hard work has paid off, and you maybe need to lay off the caffeine and energy drinks for a while, or at least have a lie down. But your new brand lands – with your customers, with your employees, and with the other people who come into contact with it. You have succeeded.

Of course, this is not always the case, and there are plenty of branding disasters that can serve as cautionary tales to us all. For example, in a way you have to feel for the people who thought that repositioning Dr. Pepper as a masculine product was a good idea – they managed to switch off their female customers and insult men at the same time. As for renaming the SciFi Channel as Syfy , when this is a slang term for a venereal disease in many countries? I’m actually lost for words.

To avoid calamities like these – and more, here are some of my thoughts on what makes a successful rebrand:

1. Keep it simple. Unless you are a Nestlé or a Unilever, make your company name and your customer brand the same if possible. This will give you a higher chance of success as you will have thousands of people – your employees – living the new brand from the start. Clearly, the risk here is that if your customer brand values are incompatible with your internal ones, your brand will fail as those thousands of employees will not live up to what the brand has promised.

2. Focus on what you are, and what you can deliver. This might sound obvious, but in rebranding situations aspiration can take over, meaning reality leaves the room. In my experience, it is better to focus on what you actually deliver – even if it doesn’t feel particularly sexy. I remember being pushed by one agency to avoid any technical or functional claims for precisely this reason, as they felt customers wouldn’t understand them. Luckily, we stuck to our guns because actually the technology (the network) was what we were all about, and customers didn’t have to be technical geniuses to get that. Authenticity is more important than trying to create false perceptions.

3. Prioritize consistency. Over the years, I have learnt to appreciate the importance of quality, consistent delivery. From your tone of voice to your logo, color palette, typeface, imagery – and real, everyday behavior – everything should be coherent and stack up. I find it fascinating to look back at some previous brand iterations, which although fine at the time, simply did not convey that sense of quality – despite solid underlying credentials. See also the examples of Gap and Tropicana here, who both tried new imagery that ultimately fell flat.

4. Get the execution right. In my view, having a clear launch day is a better strategy than drip-feeding your new brand. This not only gives a clear focus and target to your team; it allows for a distinct flip of the switch that signals a new era. From here, of course, you need to work back and identify every single brand touchpoint that exists, then plan to update them all in plenty of time. This will take longer than you think, trust me.

5. Make it real. If you just stick a new badge on the same old products and services you have always offered your customers, how are they supposed to understand what has changed, and why? In reality, it is difficult enough to get past “so what”, even when you have done a really excellent job with your new brand. So give your customers something different that makes them sit up and take notice.

6. Put a decent budget behind it. Will it cost you money…? Yes. In fact, you will probably have to count on doubling your marcom expense for a while. Hopefully, the extra money can be used to show your brand off, rather than having to work to make it relevant, which is mostly not the case.

What are your thoughts?

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Photo credit: Odido Netherlands