You might need a rebrand if…
BY LESLIE SPRING
Rebrands are tricky to get right, but there are often early warning signs when they’re needed. Some signs are obvious. Some are harder to define, but in all cases, it takes collaboration, cooperation and dedication to get through to the other side. What’s at the other side? It’s a wonderful world where staff can recite your agency’s key messages, your branding elements are on-point, and everyone can find the branded assets when they need them.
Take it from us, you might need a rebrand if…
You can’t find your style guide.
This is a big clue. If you don’t know where to find your guide (or one doesn’t yet exist), it’s time to commit to documenting your brand. Without it, you can’t communicate the value within your organization or to the public. What's worse is that if you aren’t doing this, someone else is likely doing it for you, but not well.
Shadow style guides exist.
If your colleagues have taken matters into their own hands, it’s time to regain control through a new brand or updated guidelines at the very least (see point above). We find that necessity is the mother of all shadow style guides, so if they exist, there is a reason. It could be that a public-facing department needs a sub-brand to call their own, your current brand needs to evolve, or something about your style guide is not easy to implement. No matter the reason for your season of rebranding, take it as an opportunity to build new brand champions and refocus on what makes your agency special.
When asked to provide a logo for a sponsorship or sign, you stop and think about which one to send.
There should be no doubt about which logo belongs on signage. If there is, it really is a sign of a bigger issue that likely can best be solved with a style guide overhaul or complete rebrand because this scenario is often a symptom of lack of adoption or excitement about your brand. In other words, it's an opportunity to start anew.
Your color palette is not ADA-accessible.
Color trends may come and go, but ADA-accessibility is here forever. Take advantage of the free tools that check colors for ADA compliance to make sure that your palette is up to par, and we often find that gentle evolutions in colorways can make a brand feel brand-new (pun intended). It’s a classic win-win because while you’re making your brand visually accessible to those who need it, you can also tweak your colors to feel fresh again.
It feels like it’s time.
This last one is a bit more nebulous, but it carries weight, nonetheless. If your brand feels out of alignment with your current strategic plan or visually outdated, it might be time for a rebrand. Everything has a shelf-life, and that’s ok. It doesn’t mean that there is anything fundamentally wrong with your current brand, and your gut feeling might be all it takes to launch a survey, host a focus group, or phone a friend to get some data to back up your recommendation to rebrand.
It's important to do the work to validate the need for a rebrand because they are a lot of work. But, they’re worth it. With data at your side, it’s easier to secure internal buy-in for the process and set it up for success. We’ve seen rebranding processes take hard left turns, u-turns and wind up at dead-ends when this isn’t done, so this is our biggest piece of advice: lean into your branding intuition about when a rebrand is needed, and then go out and get the proof you need to back it up. Trust, but verify.
Rebranding projects are some of our favorite assignments, so if you would like support with yours, please reach out to us at [email protected]. We also have some recent case studies available for some inspiration in the meantime.