Parameters a Business Needs to Consider Before its Rebranding Attempts A rebranding initiative is a reflection of an evolved audience and how a brand reacts to serve the needs of that new audience

As a consumer, one often sees only the old hoardings being replaced noiselessly and new packaging blend in as a brand rediscovers itself to meet the changing needs and preferences of customers. But, the brand itself has to go through several initiatives behind the scenes as part of its rebranding campaign.

Rebranding is a lot more than just creating a new logo, a new visual identity and new collaterals. It comprises introspecting on an assortment of questions, and pursuing an entire gamut of activities that are being executed as part of the overarching goal of becoming a thriving, successful, high revenue earning company that has established and bolstered its brand image with a rapidly expanding loyal consumer base. Enlisted below are a few questions that every organization needs to answer before initiating their rebranding journey-

Why Decide to Rebrand?

One of the foremost queries facing an organization on the verge of rebranding is the need to do so. A rebranding initiative is a reflection of an evolved audience and how a brand reacts to serve the needs of that new audience. Here are three major parameters that brand should evaluate themselves on while finalizing on the rebranding aspect:

Associative Identity

One common characteristic of all successful brands is that they are easily relatable to a particular idea. Take some of the leading brands for instance.

The first thought about Volvo instantly strikes safety within one's mind. Wonderful imagination immediately pops up when Walt Disney is brought into perspective and excellence and futuristic innovation is the cornerstone of Apple.

Thus, when a brand faces such an identity crisis either due to competitors overcrowding it or a steady loss of attachment from its customers, it needs to rebrand itself to recreate its earlier position of influence.

Furthermore, it needs to be adoptive and flexible enough so that the brand can absorb future shocks and quickly transform to accommodate the needs of the existing business scenarios. For instance, leading futuristic cloud communications provider Knowlarity has evolved far beyond its early days as a cloud telephony provider for small businesses. Today, the brand offers sophisticated communication platforms that are being used by large corporations with highly complex requirements. It has even begun to incorporate artificial intelligence within a cloud telephony system.

Global Identity

Most brands have to rebrand when they make the jump from a domestic market to a global one. It is essential to adapt an easily relatable identity while trying to acquire customers in several countries. The rebranding initiative aims to make the brand be recognized as a truly global company.

What will be the image?-Visualizing Rebranding through the Logo

True rebranding does not happen out of the blue. A successful rebranding exercise happens as a result of other changes that you initiate, or a changing business environment. Summarizing all these changes, within and without an organization, and then representing this through a visual image is a process that requires in-depth understanding and then constant simplification of the entire rebranding process.

Any well-designed logo will give you a rough idea of what the company does, even if you have never heard of it before. But the process is undoubtedly an intellectual exercise. As someone rightly said, "It's usually easier to say what you do. It's a bit more difficult to express who you are."

Ask any designer and they will describe how like a well-prepared delicacy, every element in a design is something that is essential to the ideation process.

This functionality assumes all the more importance when a company goes through a rebranding process, as not only does the design have to incorporate the new idea(s), but also show the transformative journey, in an obvious or understated manner. This brings in a lot more complexities, but what is obtained at the end is a compact, visual representation of the core values, ethics and principles of a business.

A logo should also indicate whether it's a B2B or B2C company. The best logos make this pretty evident! Also, a logo, while taking design based indulgences, should generally create a feeling of efficiency, clarity, focus and composure.

How Will Audiences see the New Entity?

Post the reasoning and the visualization process, it is of utmost importance to define the image of the rebranded business. This step assumes all the more importance as the organization had to go through the entire rebranding process on the first hand due to its losing relevance amongst its target audiences.

Thus, the organization needs to launch itself in an aggressive manner by portraying itself as having shed the weaknesses and the inhibitions of yesterday, having learnt from its shortcomings and possessing enough offerings to emerge as an unchallenged leader in its industry.

Aggressive promotional events, confident business dealing and acquisitions as well as a renewed focus on building customer relationship should be right on top of the bucket list of any business undergoing the rebranding process.

A business, through rebranding, needs to communicate an image of having weathered several storms successfully, only to come out stronger in the end.

Earning the trust and respect of its consumers is the greatest objective of a rebranding process, and these steps are essential for an organization to go through to achieve these objectives.