The Ultimate Guide to Successfully Rebranding in 2022

Rebranding is Expensive. Is it Worth It?

Today, companies and leaders talk about expectations and outcomes from their rebranding projects

So let’s be real: Branding is expensive. A typical design team puts 100s of hours of work into every branding project for their clients, and the collective group of people representing their clients also invests hundreds of hours participating in the process. For large, established companies, full-scale branding projects and all they entail are big investments.

As you’re probably aware, a brand is much more than a logo. In fact, the visual design system (logo, color, typography, imagery) is just one facet of branding.

Before even getting to visual design, there is research, facilitated collaborative workshops, synthesis, positioning, tone of voice, and verbal identity — a sequence of steps specifically designed to create alignment and build a firm, the strategic foundation for the brand and requiring the feedback and participation of many stakeholders.

Then after the visual design system is developed, there are many more things to consider: your website, signage, social accounts, swag, events, and marketing.

    In short, branding is no small task. 

    To do it thoughtfully and well, yes, it’s expensive. 

    Because it takes time.?               
          
                    

If you work for a risk-averse, cost-conscious client committed to using as much of your resources to pursue trivial activities as possible, it’s hard to imagine making this kind of investment in your organization’s brand. Yet you see other companies launching new brands. So there must be a good reason for such a substantial investment.

Well, don’t take our word for it.

We asked some of our clients, who now have the benefit of hindsight, to tell us what convinced them to invest in branding, to begin with, and what value their organizations have benefitted from in return for their investment. Here’s what they told us.

Rebranding happens at moments of big transition

Rebranding is not the kind of thing you do on a whim. There needs to be a powerful case for undertaking this kind of endeavour and it needs to be approached with clear-eyed expectations of what it will do for your organization. If you’re looking for a?rebrand to transform your organization, maybe you need to pause for a minute and take stock of what is happening within your organization.

Rebranding is usually an opportunity to reflect a change that has already happened or one that is underway rather than being the catalyst for a change.

“It's time to rebrand when you notice confusion or misalignment with how your key audiences perceive you and how you wish to be seen or when it starts to feel that your current brand is no longer conveying the full story and impact of your work. In most cases, nothing will be broken. But you might notice the current brand language and visuals aren't hitting the mark. One clue that it's time is when you find yourself having to overexplain because your work has evolved to include new dimensions that are not captured.”

An anticipated change in leadership is another major transformation that can prompt the need for rebranding. Another example of change that may warrant rebranding might come from the natural evolution of your organization’s work. Often, clients come to us with a specific need — often a website overhaul — that pretty quickly reveals itself as something bigger.

Other clients are motivated by a series of red flags pointing to the need. For example, a company's vertical heads were scaling up their lead generation activities and heard from prospects and current partners that their brand assets were good but not strong, memorable, and recognizable. Their in-house team spent a lot of time designing collateral for their clients because they didn't have a strong brand foundation — just a collection of fonts, colors, and treatments for their logo.?

Going into rebranding with clear expectations

Rebranding is expensive, but it costs much more over time to not invest in putting your best face forward. I always approach the question of when and how much to invest in this process by thinking about what the organization stands to gain in terms of attracting the resources it needs to achieve its mission.?

To achieve buy-in around making the investment and to pave the way for adoption across the organization, the rebrand must be positioned not as something that's being done to the staff, but as something being done with them. It can't just be lip service. By far, the costliest investment in this process comes from the commitment of time and thought from various team members and stakeholders to ensure all the decisions made along the way are strategically aligned with the overall vision of the organization. Failure to do this undermines the entire process.

All organizations should ask themselves when considering a rebrand. I think it’s important to decide what your purpose is when starting a rebranding exercise — Who is your audience? What are you trying to accomplish?

Going into a rebranding project with clear ambitions is important to set expectations for the effort within your organization. After all, this is an effort that will affect everyone on your team in one way or another. Justifying the expense of rebranding requires a leap of faith so you can help your team envision what life after your rebrand can unlock for your organization.

Yet there are still a lot of apprehensions about even using the word 'rebranding' in the corporate sector.

It’s typical that companies aren’t thinking about the larger brand and instead begin the process with a more concrete, tactical challenge – redesigning their website. As I mentioned, branding feels like a luxury, something a sneaker or tech company would spend money on, but not an organization that channels its resources to the work.?

“Going through the brand strategy process and also getting to the foundational, core idea of the brand — becomes essential to creating that short, crisp language that the clients are looking for.”

After engaging in the website redesign process, and beginning to wrestle with reorganizing how the company’s work now fits within its organizational strategy, the need for change becomes more evident. It just seems important to consider whether the logo, tagline, and colours worked well, and how to best describe the work in the short, crisp language that websites require.

How our clients have benefited after rebranding

Improved public perception is one of the more direct outcomes of a rebranding exercise. A new branding can make a big impact on how a company is perceived globally, directly increasing its revenues, recruiting, and also lifting the spirits of all the stakeholders associated with the company. Rebranding can turn everything around.

But ROI isn’t always measured in dollars, and it emerges over time. Value can be expressed in many ways, some more quantitative, some more qualitative: growth in audience reach, more trustworthiness, better employee satisfaction, influence, impact, quality recruiting, staff size, team motivation, internal alignment, communication clarity, etc.

There is a substantial cost and time saving that comes when a streamlined brand strategy enables quick visual asset production.?One unexpected use of branding is the color scheme and fonts. The continuity across the many digital platforms and the repetition of the design elements have a way of reinforcing a company's identity.

Is it worth it?

Across the board, our clients tell us the investment of time and money in a new brand was worthwhile. Our clients say they're excited about the work done together — the project was “absolutely” worth their investment.

If you’d like to learn more about the impact rebranding can have on your organization, and what you can expect from your investment and us, we’re happy to connect.