Brand Thinking

Rebranding strategy start point

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By its nature rebranding is only necessary where there is a need for significant change. That is where your brand is failing, has a poor perception or where major change is demanded.  We aim to give you a feel for the best rebranding strategy start point, deciding whether to go ahead and being crystal clear on what matters most in the process if you press the button.

Having recently rebranded ourselves there are a classic set of principles that we followed and that are described here. Frankly, If we can’t do it properly, as a branding agency, there is no hope!

First and most important is to have a clear view of where you want to be in the long term. How do you want to be seen, what should clients be saying about you, what scale of business do you want to achieve, with what market positioning? Your brand strategy has to be developed in relation to your strategic business objectives, not as a separate exercise, as is so often the case.

For us, we recognised that the brand style we portrayed has more of a creative agency feel and we needed to change our identity to reflect our strategy business focus. The Street Art design had to go and be replaced with a more business design feel. We moved away from a bright, four colour logo to a single blue colour logo with a subtle redesign making it less rounded. This is not about tweaking your brand from a purely creative perspective, it is making brand design decisions that fit an over all strategy.

Be honest about your motivation. In our case, the focus had been on our client’s brands for many years and we had not created or nurtured our own branding. Therefore, a priority for our rebranding was to reposition ourselves so that our target audience visiting our website can instantly recognise the type of brand agency we are and that our niche positioning is clear.

By its nature rebranding is only necessary where there is a need for significant change. That is where your brand is failing, has a poor perception or where major change is demanded fro business reasons. Whatever you do, don’t make a rebrand change for the sake of it. Nobody wants a ‘so what’ response.

While considering any rebrand, it is important that it has the following goals:
true to itself and fits your business aspirations
meaningful so people take notice and care that you have changed
powerful enough to make the difference everyone in your team can appreciate

Rebranding is not simply a design exercise, it is a fundamental change and relaunch. This is not a question of creating a new logo, colours and design and carrying on as before. Looking at the rebranding strategy start point, the thinking needs to be done to identify why the brand has not been successful to date and how it is going to be changed to make it successful in the future. Only when the new brand strategy is defined should the creative work be done. If you cannot write a brief that outlines the direction, positioning, key messages and what will make the rebrand distinctive, then you should not go ahead with logo design and the rest of the brand identity. In reality, 60% of rebrands never go ahead precisely because the business has not understood why it needs to be done and don’t want to risk the change and possible negative impact.

The rebrand can have a significant impact but it is not for the feint hearted. It has to be a major change, a full corporate brand identity package built from a new brand strategy, not a superficial change, a basic redesign or a bit more of the same. We have rebranded as Luna Branding in order to significantly move forward with a fresh, contemporary and relevant brand strategy. Time will tell how well we have done our rebrand! One thing is for sure, it presents our business in the way that we want to be seen.

Rebranding is a core service of ours. Luna can help you to decide if you should rebrand and manage the whole process if you go ahead.

PLEASE GET IN TOUCH TO CHAT ABOUT YOUR REBRANDING PROJECT

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