BrandQuest has now been undertaking brand strategy reviews for over 13 years.
We believe that if you take all the brand touchpoints of your organization – including the people that work there – then the brand is a consistent personification of what your brand should say (the mind) and how your brand should say it (the heart).
The first and foremost representation of a brand is your organisation’s name, logo and logo tagline.
So, our starting point to building a brand is to remain consistent and hence don’t change your brand if you don’t have to.
We see many examples where a brand is changed for no apparent strategic reason other than a new marketing manager/CEO wants to make a change ‘for change sake’.
However, there may be a number of valid reasons that may require a rebrand. A rebrand can typically range from an evolution (or brand facelift in human parlance), to a brand-new logo or in some cases a brand-new name and logo.
Typically, in our experience the following are the typical drivers of such recommendations:
Nine reasons to rebrand your business:
- What the brand started out as is no longer relevant, or not a service or product line that the organisation now provides ie; what you do no longer reflects your brand name, logo, imagery or tagline
- There is confusion by your customers in the market re; competing (or new) brands
- Your employees don’t understand your brand or their connection to it
- What your brand does is not reflected in your brand name or logo
- You have suffered bad publicity or have earned a poor reputation
- The brand was never, and cannot be, trade marked
- Your brand name is an acronym that is meaningless outside your business
- The business has been taken-over or merged and a new name is required
- The business is entering a new country and the existing brand cannot be used
As with our own client experiences, many of these rebrands can be traced to the above ‘nine reasons’.
So, when your brand strategy exposes the need for a rebrand – what’s next, a simple update (same name, evolved logo) or a major makeover (new name, brand new logo)?
Again, your brand strategy, your brand vision (and in the case of BrandQuest Clients) your Brand CanvasTM should inform your objective decision-making.
Jason Eisner is a principal of BrandQuest, a strategy, culture and brand management company that builds enduring and valuable brands.
Since co-founding BrandQuest in 2007, Jason has worked on over 100 local and international organisations from start-ups to ASX listed as well as not-for-profits.
Prior to establishing BrandQuest, Jason had 15 years of strategic marketing and operations experience in senior management and consulting roles including: The Cambridge Group (New York and Chicago) Nuvisio (New York venture backed start-up), Accenture and Tip Top Bakeries (Sydney).
Jason has a Bachelor of Commerce from UNSW and an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Chicago. He has also co-authored ‘Fast Marketing for Fast Growth’ published by New Holland and has Lectured in Marketing at the AGSM (Australian Graduate School of Management) UNSW MBA (Executive).
