Brand Refresh? 5 Tips for Success
After agonizing for months (and possibly years), you and your team have made the decision to update the company brand. The planning process is in motion and you’re at the helm. No pressure!
An organization-wide effort to update brand is one of the most exciting times in a company’s life. Aside from new product launches or reaching significant revenue milestones, a brand update brings the company together around shared values and beliefs and can re-invigorate productivity and innovation. The process is part cultural rallying cry and part marketing strategy refinement. There is not one single employee, partner or customer the results don’t influence and because of it, efforts to update brand are often met with one of two reactions: excitement or fear.
When approached thoughtfully however, the outcome feels “right”. It rings both familiar and inspirational and creates new avenues of possibility and growth across the organization. Here are five tips to ensure a successful outcome:
Goals
A brand update should have both clear rationale and specific ambition to direct the process. These can include things like customer attrition, evolving audience needs, expanded product offerings, lost relevance, new competition…the list is endless. Having a clear vision for where you’re looking to build marketshare is fundamental to driving the brand’s new strategy.
CEO support
A successful brand update has a supportive and engaged CEO behind the scenes. Asking the hard questions can be difficult in some companies. An involved CEO keeps the focus high-level while ensuring an inclusive environment for sorting out the challenges and opportunities. She or he also encourages truth-finding for the higher purpose of a more powerful brand voice.
Planning
Updating a brand is roughly an 18-month process for a soup-to-nuts brand refresh for a 500+ person organization. The process incorporates a lot of planning, brand diagnosis and development, (likely) design updates, internal and external marketing strategies, roll-out, and then maintenance.
What is nearly as important as the diagnosis itself is the time spent to organize the brand activities around normal business, events and product lifecycles. A successful plan plays off normal business flow and should leverage significant business events to increase impact.
Internal communications
Your board and staff are your biggest brand ambassadors and your most powerful asset. It’s critical to craft an inclusive plan of communication about the process and activities along the way. For employees, work is where they spend 1/3 of their life and even if they are not in sales or marketing, their buy-in and support will be instrumental to the active life of the new brand voice.
Discussion
Make time for thoughtful discussion at all phases of the process. You are charting your brand course forward and to skip or shortchange the space to listen and debate the opportunities which present themselves is to waste both costs and limit the outcome. Count on findings along the way that will challenge at least a few institutional bastions. With time embedded in the process, these will always yield unique solutions that strengthen your brand’s evolution.
Take the time to structure your brand’s refresh and feel confident in the coming results!