Bborn Evolving Brands
Brand Fresh
Injecting new life into an aging brand
Has your business moved on, but your brand is still stuck in the past? Has your identity become tired and inconsistent? Is it time to inject new life into your brand to stay in touch with changing markets?
Nearly all brands eventually reach the tipping point where brand value begins to decline. It may simply be that you’ve been in the market for a long time and your brand has become stale or lost its relevance to a new age modern consumer. Or customers’ needs may have changed, brought about by events out of your & their control like technological inventions, innovations, approach or hugely frisky competition or behavior.
Or you may no longer be the business you once were so your brand has lost meaning with customers and begun to work against you.
At this point, you can choose to reinvent your brand and start again. Or you can build on the equity in your identity by choosing to refresh it.
There are three ways in which you can successfully inject new life into your brand:
Branding Rejuvenation
Not ready to change your logo? You can still refresh your brand by redesigning your brand communications instead. This approach allows you to revisit your brand story, update your market positioning and completely makeover you’re corporate and marketing communications to present a fresh new face. This is an effective way to retain your existing identity while reinvigorating your image.
Brand Evolution
Have a highly recognizable identity, but it needs a makeover? A brand evolution is a low risk way to give your identity a new look, while maintaining a high level of brand recognition. With an evolution, the essential characteristics that people recognize in your logo are retained while the overall design is modernized. Shell has used this approach to keep their brand current for over 100 years. There have been nine evolutions of the now famous orange and yellow shell design since 1901.
Brand Transformation
Have you merged, acquired a new business, restructured or just want to tell the world you’ve changed? The best way to transform your brand is to completely redesign it from top to bottom. You can rethink your strategies and reposition for growth with a new brand story, new identity and new brand communications. You can reengage with employees and accelerate organizational change to build the business you want to be.
Are you ready to Bborn Again?
- Is your brand tired and over-exposed?
- Are your competitors seen as more in-touch with customers’ needs?
- Having to spend more on marketing to achieve the same cut through?
- Have customers stopped listening to what you have to say?
- Has your customer experience become formulaic and forgettable?
- Is your brand story simple and compelling?
Have employees forgotten what your brand stands for?
Branding Rejuvenation
Start Fresh
When brands consistently fail to meet expectations, they can become toxic. So even after you’ve restructured and rebuilt your business, the damage done to your brand’s reputation, May never be fully repaired.
If you’re working on a strategy to turn your business around, then at some point you’ll need to consider your brand. Can it be resurrected and become loved again, or do you need to make a clean break with the past?
We can help you reinvent your brand from the ground up as part of your turn-around strategy. We’ll take the time to understand where you’ve come from, the challenges you’re working through, and where you want to take your business and brand. Then we’ll create a strategy and plan to help you get there.
We can give you a new brand name, new market positioning and new identity so you can make a fresh start. We’ll redesign, produce and rollout your new branding, communications and marketing across your business, launch your new identity into the market, help you engage and inspire employees and develop the tools you need to manage your brand moving forward.
Are you ready to Bborn Again?
- Has your brand’s reputation been damaged by past events?
- Is there a negative perception in the market about your brand?
- Is there a strong desire for change within your business?
- Are you a significantly different business today than you were in the past?
- Would you achieve your strategic objectives faster with a clean break?
- Are you trying to unite a large or geographically dispersed workforce?
Are you ready to Bborn Again?
- Are different versions of your logo appearing across your business?
- Have your marketing and communications become inconsistent and fragmented?
- Are different departments taking your brand in different directions?
- Are people finding it difficult to get their hands on the artwork they need?
Do you want to strictly control how and where your brand is used?
Brand Management
Protecting brand value
Do you have an established brand that is a significant asset to your business? Do you want to control how and where your brand is used to protect its value?
From the moment your new brand is launched, people will find ways to change it. A small modification of color here, a change of typeface there, and before you know it, your branding has lost all consistency and cohesion.
The most effective way to manage and protect your brand is with a brand manual. As the name suggests, a brand manual is a ‘how to’ document that details everything there is to know about your brand.
Just as all brands are not the same, neither are all brand manuals. If your marketing and branding is managed through a single department, then a brand manual covering the basic essentials of applying your brand correctly may be all you need. Just enough detail so print suppliers and employees know how to use your brand as it was originally designed.
However, if your business is spread across numerous sites with multiple departments responsible for corporate, marketing and PR activities, then a more comprehensive brand manual should be considered. One that not only covers the basics, but also provides detailed specifications for your corporate identity, marketing and advertising communications, stationery, typing standards, Word and Power point templates, email signatures, uniforms, signage and all the other ancillary branding that comes with running a large business.
In addition to the ‘mechanical’ workings of your brand, your brand manual can also be used to help people understand the strategy behind your brand – so they can live it! Details such as what your business stands for, your market positioning, brand story and key messaging, together with insights into why customers buy, can all help make your brand manual work harder for you.
Time It Just Right
TIME THE GREAT LEVELER
Early Mover gets it first and right of the way (advantage) too before it’s too late or others have already moved in
The best way to destroy brand value is to either rebrand it unplanned or too late or with the wrong strategy. If you rebrand it without plan and perfect strategy suited to your individual business needs, then you’ll needlessly undo all the good work. Likewise, if you wait until the undertaker is at the door to repair a damaged brand, it may be too late to recover from whatever ails your business.
The lifecycle of brands is rarely talked about in terms of time in market because this is not an accurate indicator of when to rebrand. If you’re in a fast moving industry where change is constant, then you may need to refresh your brand every three years just to stay in the race. On the other hand, if your industry is one where change happens more slowly, it may take up to 10 years for your brand to reach the tipping point where a rebrand makes good business sense.
Sheep get slaughtered!
Be a sheep at your own peril!
Avoid being A Sheep in A Slaughter house (Today’s market)
Innovating is hard. Damn hard.
Be Subtle: Be Dead
Why there’s no value in being subtle when changing a brand
Some people have an eagle eye. And in the case of a recent brand refresh by some major consumer brand companies, you would need to have perfect vision to notice that any change had been made at all.
The ‘new’ logo looked exactly like the old one! It was in fact exactly the same logo except for the color, in place of a complete overhaul.
There are two reasons why half hearted ‘rebrand’ is a poor use of business capital.
The first is it is not value generating. Few customers, or even employees for that matter, would even know that this redesign has occurred. This may have been the goal, however if no one sees any change then what was the purpose of the rebrand? They’ve missed a great opportunity to not only transform their business, but also to reconnect with customers, new customer acquisition, reinvigorate their image and reposition the business for growth.
The other reason is the overwhelming cost of the exercise to the company. Not just in time and the distraction to management, but the cost to re-badge branches, re-skin vehicles and update every piece of marketing and business communication across the business, just so it looks the same as it did before.
Thinking up audacious ideas to tackle hard to solve problems takes time. And Lot of time too. Time that you don’t have, probably when you’ve got meetings to attend, customers to keep happy and above all brand operation & management fires to put out.
That’s why it’s tempting to seek inspiration by sneaking a look at what your competitors are doing and maybe pick up some quick ideas to help you solve your own marketing problems.
Ignore them. Your problems are just that. Your problems! Your competitors don’t have a magic marketing formula. They don’t know the secret to eternal success. They don’t know your business or customers better than you do.
The more you know about your competitors’ strategies and tactics, the more you’ll fill your head with their ideas. Eventually, without even knowing it, you’ll start to think like them. Then you’ll start to sound like them, look like them and eventually you’ll be just another ‘me too’ brand struggling to survive.
Ignore the competition. They’re a distraction from the main game – winning and keeping customers. It’s customers who will decide whether your brand lives, or fades into insignificance. Not your competitors.
Innovations are just connections you haven’t yet thought of. Start feeding your imagination by thinking about what customers really want. Find out if you really understand them or if you’re just making assumptions based on old ideas? Are they crying out for something new and exciting? Is there a hole in the market just waiting to be filled by someone with guts and vision?
If you need more inspiration, look outside your own industry. Find brands you admire and learn from what they do differently. Read about the brands that weren’t afraid to disrupt traditional industries and change entire markets. Cherry-pick their ideas and adapt them to your own business. Don’t be afraid to think differently.
If you do, you’ll be the brand that your competitors will find hard to ignore.
Build a Brand
We create brands—built on a solid, strategic foundation, designed to make an impact. In our crowded, over-stimulated world, brands must be smarter, braver and more emotionally relevant than ever to differentiate and compete.
We can get you there…
- Create and launch a new brand and identity
- Develop consumer insights to establish new creative territories
- Build distinct, powerful and memorable brand assets and voice
Invigorate And Harmonize Brand
We’ll help you harness the power of empathy and insight to re-imagine brands, products and experiences. Better yet, we make it all work together to drive results.
- Increase value of marketing spend
- Achieve local and global adaptability
- Use design-led thinking to drive global innovations
- Effectively manage brand assets to their full potential
Create 3D Brands
KNOW-HOW
ADD DIMENSIONS TO A BRAND
We activate brands through innovative experiences that deliver powerful and meaningful impressions. We apply strategy, design, storytelling and technology to build immersive experiences that engage people in a living extension of your brand..
- Create richer more engaging customer journeys
- Coordinate brand touch-points across media
- Develop loyalty and brand advocacy
Brand Brief: How’s & Why’s
Make time to talk The most important conversation you will ever have with your brand strategy partners is the one where you brief them on your problem. Forget long-winded written briefs. Get your management team together and meet with your designers so they can ask the kinds of questions needed to get a real understanding of your situation.
Share your problem Why are you doing this project? What problem are you trying to fix? Why is it important to your bottom line? Designers are creative problem solvers – not artists. We want to know about your business, your problems and challenges so we can design a solution that results in real change.
Avoid Trespassing If you have ideas, then by all means, share them with your brand partners. But avoid at all costs the temptation to put your ideas into strategy & development. If you have gone to the trusted doctors for fixing a certain set of ailments leave yourself in the hands of the experts to get the best out of you. If they find merit in your ideas they will definitely adapt it for the benefit of your brand.
Think like your customer What motivates your customers to buy? If you don’t know, ask! They’ll be happy to tell you. Buy your own products and use them. Sit in on sales meetings and listen. Try your competitors’ offers and compare how your brand experience really stacks up. Spend a day walking in your customers’ shoes. You’ll be amazed at what you discover!
Think change, not just awareness If people are not spending their money with you, they’re spending it with a competitor. Often the problem is not how do you build awareness for your brand, but how do you get people to switch? Think about what it would take to get people to shift. What are the triggers and barriers to change? How can you exploit these to your advantage?
Have an eye on the future Where do you want to take your business next month? Next year? Five years from now? Do you have big dreams of expanding outside your local market? Is there a long-term plan to transform into an entirely different business? Your name or brand identity may be perfect for the business you are now, but a complete headache if you open an overseas office or diversify.
Differentiate, differentiate and differentiate! Quality and customer service are givens in business. If you don’t already possess them, you won’t be around for long. Dig deep and find out what really makes your brand different from the others. Speak to your brand’s biggest fans and find out why they love you. Investigate your business history and where you’ve come from. Look for those things you do differently from your competitors that deliver a sustainable competitive advantage. Think about what values are ingrained in your organization that define who you really are!
Explore
Our partner brands range from Fortune 500 titans to emerging brands. We work globally with Pan globe virtual presence and also across our network offices in various commercial capitals. After all world has been relegated to the levels of Global village thanks immensely to the growing technology, communications & connectivity warfare.
No matter what industry or culture you represent, we would be delighted to share and discuss your brand needs. Get in touch with us and we will show you how we can effectively manage your brands across the entire spectrum of cross cultural demographics, both general and ethnic.