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How to Rebrand Successfully — Ultimate Guide for 2023

How to Rebrand Successfully — Ultimate Guide for 2023

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You have determined that branding is necessary. Great!

You have already completed the most difficult step by deciding to rebrand. It takes forward-thinking to adjust what has previously worked in order to future-proof your brand.

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Congratulations! 

Rebranding without a goal or plan can only lead to failure. Rebranding is more important than just sketches and designs when it comes to renaming your business.

At the same time it is a fantastic option for many sizable businesses, from Dunkin’ Donuts to Uber, that have had success in the past.

So let’s examine what rebranding is and how to rebrand successfully.

What is Rebranding?

Rebranding is a marketing tactic that entails updating a company’s identity by creating a new name, symbol, logo, and other relevant visual assets like marketing materials. 


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Rebranding aims to establish a fresh and distinctive brand identity in the eyes of customers, investors, potential clients, rivals, employees, and the general public.

Reasons for Rebranding

Rebranding is difficult and fraught with danger. In the end, being aware of the dangers associated with rebranding will help you decide whether or not you’ve decided to rebrand for the right reasons.

Rebranding, however, can be the best course of action if you’re thinking about it since your company’s vision, mission, values, and target market are no longer represented in your brand.

There are a few key factors that might influence your rebranding decision:

1. New areas

If you’re entering new international areas where people won’t recognize your current logo, messaging, etc., you might need to update your brand.

2. Market realignment

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Brands are created to connect businesses with their consumers. If you reposition your company to focus on a different customer profile through a change in product, location, pricing, or promotion, your brand will need to change along with it.

3. Fresh Philosophy

Fresh philosophy

It’s critical that you comprehend your company’s goal, vision, and values before you rebrand. Think about and evaluate what makes your business unique, or are in an otherwise straightforward industry with a very clear value prop, customer demand, and expectations.

What core beliefs underpin your business and why does it exist? What’s the voice of your brand?

Your messaging must be consistent with the words, tone, and voice you employ for your brand. You can create your new brand on a solid foundation provided by these. Without this base, no branding can be successful.

 

5. Acquisitions and mergers

When two businesses merge, two brands merge with them as well. You can’t merely let both brands compete if your company was acquired by or merged with another company. Confusion can be avoided and trust can be increased by creating a new brand that represents the new entity.

6. Bad reputation

A rebrand can help consumers see your company in a new, positive light and rekindle their commitment to your brand if you’re having troubles. Rebrand will transform bad brand recognition into neutral or good brand recognition via a customer success survey.

7. Overcoming a crisis in your public relations

Overcoming a crisis in your public relations

A rebrand can assist you in overcoming a public relations identity crisis that damaged your current brand. To resolve an identity conflict with its old brand, Comcast took this action when they developed the Xfinity brand. 

Uber recently took this action to combat a great deal of negative press over the way its management ran the company. A partial rebrand is rarely sufficient when trying to resolve a PR disaster.

Rebranding is not always a good choice, and here is when you should not do it:

8. Boredom

Too frequently, people who are tired of seeing the same logo and phrase every day consider a redesign. Remember that your clients (who see your brand far less frequently) might adore that defining hue you’ve grown to detest when you start to feel restless with it.

9. Covering up a crisis

A rebrand is not the solution, regardless of whether you’re battling enduring internal problems or avoiding negative headlines. The majority of customers and staff members are astute enough to see straight through your branding and recognize it for what it is—a cover-up.

10. Influence and ego

A rebrand may appear like the quickest approach to establish yourself for new managers. However, the majority of new managers aren’t making the kind of institutional changes that would necessitate a rebrand. New leadership who insists on a rebrand almost always does it more for themselves than for the firm.

Types of Rebranding

Types of Rebranding Exist

We have divided branding into three main categories using our knowledge. This will assist you in choosing the kind of rebranding that would work best for your business.

1. Brand Refresh

The most typical kind of rebranding that revitalizes your current brand is this one. Has anything changed somewhat in terms of your company’s SMART goals and objectives? Is the logo of your business out of date? 

Rebranding is the choice made by your branding agency. Your visual identity will be adjusted and changed in order to keep up with the most recent consumer trends.

2. Brand Fusion

When your firm hires new management or undergoes a merger or acquisition, a brand merger occurs. In this case, two or more platforms are combined into one. 

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For instance, using two logos combined into one.

3. Complete Rebrand

The complete brand redesign is a significant choice that affects every facet of your company. When their goods or services fail to appeal to the target market, businesses will decide to completely rebrand. Your new brand will bear little to no similarity to the one you had before with a complete redesign.

Successful Rebranding Examples

Rebranding Examples

For your inspiration, consider the following instances of successful rebranding. Or visit our rebranding case study for BIG, an innovation consultancy. 

Made in Bhutan

The country created the “Made in Bhutan” marketing campaign to advertise its products, services, and tourism. The country’s rebranding made it easier for it to be perceived as a place that offers pleasant, robust, and high-quality tourists.

Uber

The business was having internal problems and was in need of a change. In order to get a new viewpoint and a strong starting point, they chose to rebrand. Their rebranding conveyed security and reliability to the target market.

LEGO

The rebranding of LEGO had been so brilliant that it has been dubbed the biggest corporate turnaround ever.

The well-known toy firm had once become stale and out-of-date despite operating for nearly 90 years. By 2003, they had run out of money, were drowning in debt, and had lost the trust of their primary market—children. With the addition of movies and entertainment venues with a LEGO theme, LEGO expanded the reach of its brand of joy and excitement

And as a result, their clients were further engaged, wherever they could have been in the world. Due to its expansion and current prominence, the company has even been referred to as the “Apple of Toys.”

Typeform

The company wished to focus more intently, become more human-centric, and set itself apart from rivals. So they made the decision to rebrand. After the rebrand, the company’s new, amusing images demonstrated empathy and helped forge new emotional connections with the users.

Dunkin

They wanted to branch out from merely selling donuts and target coffee lovers in order to increase their clientele. They were able to accomplish what they wanted thanks to a new typeface and a new brand name.

How to Rebrand Successfully: 6 Step Process

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Rebranding Process

1. Recognize your values, mission, and vision

It’s critical that you comprehend your company’s goal, vision, and values before you rebrand. Think about and evaluate what makes your business unique. What core beliefs underpin your business and why does it exist? What’s the voice of your brand? 

Your messaging must be consistent with the words, tone, and voice you employ for your brand. You can create your new brand on a solid foundation provided by these. Without this base, no branding can be successful.

2. Have a complete rebranding strategy 

Many businesses do not have the luxury of beginning from scratch, even though things are simpler if you throw everything out and start again. When developing your brand strategy if you’re performing a partial rebrand, be careful to include the existing brand assets

A branding that integrates seamlessly with what already exists is what you desire. Make sure that any new branding changes are in harmony with the existing brand components.

For example, if you were producing podcasts and videos, you can use transcriptions as a way of repurposing content and strengthening your brand consistency.

If you already have a product packaging design or package images, for instance, make sure to alter them to reflect your new brand.

3. Think about your brand’s target market, the industry, and your competitors

Think about your brand's target market

Do some study on your competitors’ strategies before you rebrand. Identify your unique selling proposition and how you differ from your rivals. Pay attention to what’s popular and make sure you follow a trend that benefits your business.

Your new brand identity must be modern and up to date, but not so trendy that it becomes stale too quickly. Making faults in your rebranding approach makes it far too simple to err along the process and lose market share.

Brand recognition and rebranding involve both art and science. Think about using focus groups to test your rebranding materials with your target market and client base, among other things.

4. Rebuild your brand identity

Rebuilding your brand identity is crucial for a rebrand. The key is to consistently apply your brand’s visual aspects and characteristics throughout all of your marketing collateral. Customers can imagine your brand identity while they use your products.

Keep the following in mind when you design your brand identity to be successful:

  • Rename your business. This is a crucial component of your rebranding to promote the long-term expansion of your company. The name of your business should reflect the objective, vision, and values of your brand. Include a place, a new word, or an old word used in novel ways when renaming something to improve the process. You can also add a suffix or prefix.
  • Make a catchy slogan. Your brand will become instantly identifiable to others as a result. Try to be metaphorical, utilize poetic language, make a claim, give directions, and flatter the target audience while coming up with the ideal tagline. An effective slogan is memorable and expresses the aim and vision of your business. It’s the distilled mission of your business. Changing slogans is a little simpler for your marketing campaigns than changing names. But you should consider both processes carefully.
  • Rework your logo to reflect the key alterations to your brand. Show confidence in your logo design by keeping it straightforward. Be versatile for many applications and channels. Your logo should reflect your beliefs, mission, and vision. In the long term, make it unforgettable.
  • Change the color palette. As you are aware, color has a significant influence on your brand. Likely, your rivals employ comparable hues. Consider your brand with fresh eyes and see whether it is consistent with your brand image using competitor research and color psychology.
  • Review your electronic signature and typography. Look at why your old fonts are no longer effective for your company and whether your original fonts are still appropriate for your messaging and brand.
  • After a rebrand, take a second to analyze your shapes and imagery. They ought to reinforce the essential facets of your brand identity.
  • Create new brand standards that are crucial for logos. For your logo rules, for instance, take into account the following components: color variants, logo parts, clean space, scaling, and rotations.
  • Rebrand your videos to humanize the company and maintain client loyalty. As a result, they choose to interact with businesses that offer a wonderful experience and stir up feelings through films.
  • Take care of email design. Initial impressions matter. And in the digital age, email is frequently how we form initial impressions. For instance, a welcome email is the initial communication between your company and a new client or prospect. It helps to set reasonable expectations, which is why the majority of business owners prefer that their email addresses originate from their company domain. Even more significant, though, are the email’s general layout and content. 

5. Observe brand sentiment

Observe brand sentiment

Find out what your customers want to see in a rebrand while you’re updating the new elements for your brand. You can next conduct focus groups or surveys to ascertain whether branding messages and visuals are consistent with the purpose, principles, and vision of your company.

Even if clients give you unfavorable feedback, you may still take the effort to make sure your business satisfies their needs. Monitoring brand sentiment both during and after the rebranding process is important.

6. Launch your rebranding

A rebrand, at its best, can serve as a motivator to maintain consistency and in all future marketing initiatives. The last step is a rebranding launch. Once you have completed each of the aforementioned steps, it is time to inform others. Try to spread the word using newsletters, paid commercials, TV, radio, social media, and other channels.

A press release posted on your website and social media platforms can also be used to introduce your branding. Point out the modifications you’ve done, the fresh aspects you’ve added, how your customers will benefit from the rebranding, and how to use a new website.

Final Thoughts on How to Rebrand Successfully 

The advantages of rebranding won’t just influence your company’s profitability, but also your whole marketing initiatives. 

Giving your brand a new design can help you reach more potential customers, differentiate yourself from your rivals, demonstrate your subject matter expertise, and increase the reach of your goods and services. So, be very careful with the rebranding process and judge properly when to rebrand. 


Author: Nina Petrov is a content marketing specialist, passionate about graphic design, content marketing, and the new generation of green and social businesses. She starts the day scrolling her digest on new digital trends while sipping a cup of coffee with milk and sugar. Her white little bunny tends to reply to your emails when she is on vacation.

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