The very best companies outlive their founders which means most will undergo some form of rebrand or brand evolution in their lifetime. Most businesses do it once they are mature enough to have discovered their true focus. Some go through multiple rebrands to ensure they remain current and others even try to rebrand and end up reverting back to their old branding (Most can remember the Gap rebrand disaster of 2010).
With this is mind how do you know if it’s time to refresh your brand? Here are five telltale signs:
Reason to Rebrand 1: Your target audience has shifted
Your customer profile has changed: Your design choices should be chosen specifically to appeal to your targeted demographic. So if your customer profile has changed, it’s logical that your branding should too.
Reason to Rebrand 2: Falling behind the competition
So the competition has upped its game, your arch-rival is now bigger, better and shinier than you. The worst thing to do is stand still. It’s at this point it might be worth considering a rebrand to give yourself the edge over them. As well as offering a point of difference, your new branding should be simple, memorable, meaningful and – most importantly – true to itself .
Reason to Rebrand 3: Your brand is no longer relevant
The last thing any business wants is to be left behind. But that’s what’ll happen if your branding is outdated or associated with something that’s no longer meaningful. To remain current, you might find you have to go through more than one rebrand – but you should always aim to be timeless and try to anticipate what will work in the future. Re-branding isn’t cheap!
Reason to Rebrand 4: You’ve outgrown your brand
Perhaps you’re expanding into foreign markets? Building an international presence is no mean feat. As well as having to get to grips with how other markets operate, you might also come across obstacles like language. Do some research and find out what your company name means in a country before you try to launch your product or service. Your branding has to be translatable and make sense to the market it’s being sold in. The cleaning product ‘Jif’ famously changed it’s name to ‘Cif’ in 2001 when they realised that some European nationalities struggled to pronounce their name.
Reason to Rebrand 5: You know you can do better
If you’d launched today, this isn’t the brand direction you would’ve envisaged: Perhaps you’ve expanded into different markets or you now sell different products, if what you’re offering doesn’t match up with how you would like to be perceived it could be time to rethink your branding. Armed with the power of hindsight you might even want to rebrand with a much more flexible ‘abstract’ name that won’t limit your future potential, see the benefits of this here.
If you can relate to any of these points and decide that redesigning your branding is the right step for your company, do keep in mind that you may be able to evolve your old brand rather than completely starting a fresh. You may have built up a level of trust and loyalty with your customers, so it would be a real shame to throw all of that hard work away.
At Gorilla we help many established companies refocus their brand. We also set new companies on the road to success. if you would like help with your project simply get in touch with one of friendly team here to discuss your ideas and goals.
