January 13, 2012
With the New Year already upon us many of you will be working on your ‘goals’ and ‘to-do list’ for 2012 and rebranding your company might be hot on the agenda. Unsure if you need to rebrand? Here’s 8 tips to help you on your way.
1. Reasons to rebrand
Your image may be tired, out of date or it may not reflect what you do anymore. If your company has gradually changed over the years, or your company pursues different work to that of the past and your existing branding no longer matchs your products or services. The average lifetime of a brand identity is 7-10 years depending on the industry sector you’re in.
You may wish to actively change the direction of the company away from past activities and have decided to break completely with the old company image.
2. The right brand name
Often company names are based on the name of the person or people who started the company or a spin on what the company does or produces. It is helpful to name your company so that when it is mentioned to someone who has never come across you before, they are able to make an accurate guess at your area of business just from your company’s name. This will also help you online with search engine optimisation.
Once you have your short list of possible new names you will need to check which domain names are available, if you are an incorporated body you will also need to check with the Consumer and Business Services in your state to see that no other company is using the name in your industry sector.
You may also want to check that the company name or trade mark you choose is not trade marked by another company, IP Australia can assist with this.
3. What will need to be redesigned?
Here is a checklist of all the things that you may have had branded with your existing company brand identity and logo design:
For our professional service industry clients, such items as corporate stationery, brochures, flyers, press advertisements, office and vehicle signage, quotations and invoices, exhibition banners, website, e-Newsletters and social media channels will require rebranding.
For our friend’s in the wine industry, such items as corporate stationery, brochures, flyers, press advertisements, wine label design, wine packaging, cartons, tasting notes, promotional items, office and vehicle signage, quotations and invoices, exhibition banners, website, e-Newsletters and social media channels will require rebranding.
4. The costs involved
You need to consider many costs. The obvious ones are reprinting of your corporate stationery and brochures. Your adverts will need to be updated as well as the company website and your e-Newsletter may need to have the banner graphics updated. Don’t forget things like your invoices, your pull-up banner, folders and badges for meetings and exhibitions and freebies like notepads and post-it notes. The other thing to watch out for is rebranding company vehicles, especially if you have lots of them. The cost of rebranding to a one-person company may be limited to website and stationery changes but to a larger firm the costs will be proportionately larger – and need to be carefully planned to avoid overlap of the two brands as much as possible.
5. The benefits
After you have completed your rebranding you have the perfect opportunity to contact all your customers, more than once, to let them know. Contact with customers for a positive reason, not purely to push sales is always good. Customers will be receptive to pure information, without pushy sales messages to get past, and are likely to be more receptive to any brochure you send with your notification letter.
6. Organisation
The rebranding process takes time and effort, attention focuses in the early stages of thinking up new names and deciding what items need to be rebranded first and the others that can wait. A budget for the cost of the process is also a good idea, find out the costs of anything that needs to be printed or re-made and factor them into the cost of the whole process. Don’t forget that meetings and the decision making process all take up time, time in which you might normally be doing company, so add that to the costs as well.
7. Technical stuff
When you have a brand design consultancy or graphic designer to help with your new brand identity design and corporate stationery redesign be sure to ask for a brand style guide to be designed at the same time so that anything produced in the future, in any medium, can be made up using the same colours, typefaces and generally match the spirit of what you already have. At We Create we provide a brand style guide with every branding or rebranding we complete for our clients adding value to their investment.
If your rebranding has changes your email address and website address you may need to adjust the settings on your computer, and your mobile devices, to collect mail from your new address. It’s worth testing this thoroughly before the big switchover, you don’t want to miss business because the email isn’t getting through.
8. Using your rebranded items
As soon as you have a calendar of rebranding activities and your new corporate stationery, start to distribute them on the allotted days when you go networking or have meetings to spread the word about the rebranding. Send out your new stationery and brochures to all your clients and take this golden opportunity to re-connect with them and hopefully kick-start some new orders.
Rebranding is a big project but well worth the effort and don’t forget rebranding is easy with We Create! We specialise in branding – it’s our passion and talent – so if you need a hand don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today to get started on your new brand identity and ring in the New Year with style!
Want more information? Read Carrie’s article on The ins and outs of investing in branding.
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Posted by Astrid Varga, Creative Director | 16 January 2012.
We Create Design Solutions is an Adelaide-based brand design consultancy passionate about strategy – not just pretty pictures!
If you want to work with a creative team who can work one-on-one with you to deliver highly personalised, innovative and strategic brand identity design, brand communications, graphic design, logo design and wine label design solutions, get in touch with us today.
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