Rebranding: The Lifeblood of Business Growth The rebranding comes as a natural evolutionary process where we want to facelift our brand with a whole new personality
By Harishanker Kannan •
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A business that aims to thrive always seek out for evolution, growth, and expansion – to make it big in the market, amongst the customers, trusted by partners and vendors. Sometimes, in the process, it outgrows the product that is initiated, and this is when rebranding becomes a necessity to mirror its new and industry expertise. After all, the world of business is always ready to embrace variations for betterment. Flaunting a new look and feel with a brand-new identity always sounds fun and exciting but sometimes it can become tricky. A systematic process, a lot of brainstorming, a strategy and roadmap go a long way in making this shift a success.
Why a Company Needs to Rebrand: The Driving Elements
There can be different reasons why a company considers rebranding – to shed off a negative image, to showcase its expansion, shed light on a new set of products, acquisition or partnership, change in ideology, or maybe a combination of all of them! The reason to upgrade one's brand may vary from organization to organization depending on their end-goals and business objectives but most ideally it is Time and Growth that drives this change.
When a company expands with a 360-degree approach adding new and better products, exploring and expanding its markets, acquiring new customers, accelerating business profit and redefining innovation - it should ideally rethink its brand perspectives. Rebranding is not a compulsion, it is a spontaneous precondition, a part of the evolutionary process, where a new brand of the company will corroborate its gradual evolution, constant innovation, and lucid growth. It can be a simple logo change, or a change of the brand name or maybe a shift in the entire corporate philosophy – it is crucial to understand what the company truly seeks!
When a product matures and expands in the market, it requires a new name and identity to reflect its growth trajectory, its gradual evolution, and extended capabilities. We rebranded MobiLock to Scalefusion as we wanted to get rid of the older perception to make space for a fresh product impression. The rebranding comes as a natural evolutionary process where we want to facelift our brand with a whole new personality.
How a Company Should Define Rebranding: 10 Golden Rules
For a business owner, having valid reasons to renovate his corporate image is of immense importance. Once the most crucial business objectives, the underlying goals and probable impact of rebranding have been figured out, it always gets easier from there. The next step will be to finalize a process and a set of guidelines to follow and achieve progressive changes.
It is advisable to document all the practical steps that are needed to be taken, in an orderly manner.
Chalk Out the Reasons for Rebranding: Why the company needs to revamp itself and what goals and objectives it wants to meet through rebranding. List out all the relevant and practical reasons behind this proposed change and why it is vital. The first part of the article talks vividly about that.
What do You Want the Rebranding to Achieve: It is important to understand and nurture the ultimate philosophy behind rebranding – an inspiration and an aspiration that can motivate all with a common goal to visualize what the new brand will ultimately achieve for the company.
What are the Elements That Require Facelift: What should be the extent of rebranding? Should it be just the logo, the brand name, the digital presence, the company culture, the ideology of all of them? List down every component of the company that should showcase the new brand and the shift.
Announce the Decision to the Employees: Find the right time to announce the decision of rebranding to all the employees and declare the reasons, objectives and desired outcomes from the process and the probable chaos that can follow inside the company. Keep them informed about all the modifications.
Organize a Team to Work on Rebranding: It is a crucial exercise to define, design and direct the right path of corporate rebranding. Select a team of people who with their early involvement and brainstorming sessions can offer pivotal marketing ideas and insights for future transitions.
Conceptualize a New Logo and Brand Name: A whole lot of thought process goes behind deciding and ideating about the new logo and brand name. They don't only need to be unique yet meaningful, but also must convey the new brand message and perception with full clarity and creativity. It is also important to reimagine a new company vision statement.
Create a Communication Plan: The assigned team should create and follow a precise, consistent, timely and strategic communication plan with emails, digital ads, event participation, social media posts, press releases and other messaging content for clients, customers, employees and the industry in general.
List Out Activities and Set Timelines: Rebranding connotes necessary shifts in organizational and departmental levels like marketing, design, operations, internal processes, product development, content messaging and so on. List out the changes to implement, create tasks and activities around them and attach a timeline to each of them.
Design a Marketing Plan: Rebranding is a big deal and the company shouldn't leave a single valuable chance to express its emotions, stories, concept, philosophy, and experiences with the media. Carving a flawless marketing plan is significant to make the world know and be a part of this exercise.
Relaunch the Brand and Keep the Buzz Alive: This involves fixing the right date for relaunching the new brand, preparing a corporate event, publicizing the new brand appearance, website, logo, and planning about the announcements through social media, press releases, blogs, offline and digital media. Most importantly, keep the rebranding buzz alive to let the world be aware of the change and recent growth.
Afterword
Rebranding often requires transformation - either partial or complete. It is advisable to realize its scope, limitations, outcomes, and benefits at large before chalking out a full-fledged rebranding plan. The success will always depend upon striking the right balance between practicality and passion wherein taking calculated risks and setting realistic expectations plays a strong role. Rebranding is a lively exercise where a company experiences how to add a method to the madness and find clarity through chaos. Sometimes, keeping an anecdote of observations, complications, and lessons, which accompanied the entire rebranding episode helps in gaining and sharing wise insights, empathy, and intuition with the world through beautiful stories or corporate blogs.
