A brand is a promise. It’s a promise to your audience, built to connect emotionally and deliver functionally.

Great brands consistently deliver on this promise. Sometimes, however, this promise can shift and change in the eyes of a customer, slowing growth or losing traction in the market. It might be time for a rebrand. Often, there’s a small catalyst. Something that drives a decision maker in a business to explore a change.

Every brand’s situation is different, but one thing rings true: when a rebrand is strategic, creative, and executed flawlessly, significant brand and business value can be created. When a brand is relaunched poorly, however, significant damage can occur to the brand’s reputation in the eyes of the consumer and ultimately, to the bottom line.

When undertaking a rebranding initiative in order to increase brand value, consider what is the catalyst for change. Why now? There are multiple reasons to consider a rebrand, driven either by internal or external forces. A best-case scenario would be to drive your rebrand initiative on your own terms, before a changing competitive landscape or new consumer paradigm forces your hand.

Some of those catalysts include:

Changing customer demographics or behaviour

The beverage category is changing rapidly in North America, driven mostly by shifting attitudes towards sugary drinks and their health implications. Beverage Digest reported last year that soda consumption was at a 31-year low in the United States. This is likely behind significant updates to Diet Coke and Coke Zero, the latter more prominently displaying “Zero Sugar” in the brand mark itself.

New entrants or competitive activity

Often linked directly to changing consumer behaviour, new competitive brands can become the catalyst for a brand revitalization. This is especially pronounced when new offerings bring a new visual aesthetic, messaging or value proposition to the category. Some recent examples include Halo Top low-calorie, high-protein ice cream and La Croix sparkling water dramatically reshaping their categories.

An inconsistent customer brand experience

This may be the most important catalyst for considering a brand revitalization. Whether it’s a proliferation of sub-brands; entering new channels, markets or regions; creating new formats or even just old-fashioned breakneck growth, sometimes the consumer is left with a different version of the brand in different touchpoints. The retail experience could be at odds with the online experience, for instance. The driver here is often an unclear brand system and a lack of an effective brand tool kit to help the brand travel across every touchpoint consistently.

Low brand or category growth

help brands better understand their consumer perceptions, we dive into consumer behaviour and connect that to a brand category analysis, revealing the drivers behind a brand’s performance in the market. In the case of low category growth, that is the perfect time to explore an option to help a brand truly differentiate and stand out from the pack.

Getting ahead of the game

When I began working to develop the brand strategy for the Canadian Franchise Association, the catalyst for change was threefold:

1) the evolution of the association into more advocacy and public affairs work representing the Canadian franchise community, 2) a proliferation of sub-brands over their long history solving numerous challenges for their stakeholder groups, and 3) seeking to get ahead of a shift in expectations from the next generation of franchise professionals.
The CFA chose to get ahead of a true need and relaunch their brand for the future.

Aligning the team, leadership & investment

So you’ve decided to explore a brand refresh. Setting objectives for the rebrand and getting the right team aligned to go forward with the project are paramount. Structured input into the goals from key stakeholders, along with a secured budget for the initiative and an executive champion, all must be committed to the success of the project.

Finding a driving insight

The key at this stage is to leave assumptions behind and take a fresh look at the category, culture, competition, and (most importantly) consumer.
Using behavioural insights and a deep understanding of how a consumer perceives your brand, the focus at this stage is to define (or refine) the essence of the brand, and identify what will drive consumers to buy, love, and recommend your product or service.

Build it up (don’t tear it down)

What about your brand equity today and your brand’s history can be incorporated? An effective rebranding initiative (usually) builds upon the history and true strengths of the brand.

If you’re playing Five Card Draw, you don’t want to ask for four new cards. That’s just not your hand. You want to understand your strengths, drop your weaknesses, and look to complete that perfect hand.
Discover where your real equity lies and build upon it, discarding the brand elements that aren’t helping you make a compelling promise to your consumers you can deliver on.

An inspiring brand vision

At the heart of every brand is a brand vision, one that every person charged with the development of the brand understands and internalizes. Tesla’s vision is a world powered by sustainable energy. This clearly guides both brand decisions and new product development, such as their home battery and solar roof products, in both cases laying the foundation for future growth beyond electric cars.

Developing an iconic visual brand

Creative. This is where design translates the core idea into one that leads with visual standout, drives consumer preference, and builds brand equity at every point of the customer experience.
In redeveloping the visual brand, a key question to ask is: does the brand achieve objectives visually, emotionally, functionally, and structurally everywhere it lives?

Communicating the brand to stakeholders

A critical component of success in building the visual brand is to create more than just identity guidelines by building a brand book and creative tool kit.
The brand book inspires, informs, and guides the brand into the future. The tool kit is a comprehensive and flexible set of visual brand and communications assets that acts as the foundation for the brand moving forward. This exists for use internally, for external communications partners, interior or structural designers, for use by local or regional marketers or franchisees, and many more people contributing to the development of your brand.

Launching effectively

The rollout may be the most difficult and critical aspect of the brand relaunch. Many brands use a staged rollout due to the sheer volume of materials that need to be updated or revised.
Focusing on your priority marketing channels and high-impact updates will drive coverage for the new brand and identity quickly and effectively, although it is recommended to transition in full quickly.

Starting with your brand idea, developing a creative platform for launch is critical, and having a plan to extend across your consumer website, social media, email and loyalty, and strategic signage will drive awareness of the new key brand. The transition period may cause some confusion, and is best addressed immediately. There are a number of things to watch out for in this transition process, including around partner commitments, franchisee agreements, and inventory of assets that have the previous brand identity.

Simply put, these nine key steps to rebrand success will help your brand navigate changing and challenging times.