Your brand identity is the visual representation of your brand message. It is the optical package that your brand puts forth, in order to influence the brand image that the consuming public will adopt. What if your brand identity strategy is no longer working to build your brand? What if your identity is not positively influencing perceptions of your brand?
It might be time for rebranding.
How will you know?
Read on to learn about the benefits of rebranding, and how you can determine if your brand identity strategy will benefit from it.
Rebranding for Your Brand Identity Strategy
At its very core, your visual brand identity is your brand promise. When expertly designed, its colours, lines, shapes, fonts, and placement send messages to viewers about your brand’s mission, vision, and values. It also hints at elements like price point, quality, and target audience.
It is imperative that when you’re contemplating rebranding, you endeavour to maintain the relationships you’ve already established (with existing clients), to preserve the client loyalty you’ve achieved, and to appeal to new, prospective clients. For these reasons, when rebranding or revamping an existing brand identity strategy, you must view rebranding as a sort of evolution—not a core transformation.
Another important point to keep in mind when evolving your brand identity strategy: The changes made should be for the sole purpose of catering to the wants and needs of your ideal clients and extended target audience—not for satisfying your needs, as a brand. Remember that your brand exists for your clients, and your brand is what they say it is. Therefore, all changes should be made with them at the forefront.
So what are the advantages of creating an evolved brand identity strategy, or rebranding? There are many, but the top three would have to be:
- stimulating brand growth
- gaining a competitive lead
- acquiring flexibility to keep pace with an expanding market
And how will you know when it’s the right time for rebranding, with a redesigned brand identity strategy? Here are some clues:
- Brand awareness has dropped, due to lack of interest or a competitive overshadowing.
- Your brand’s relevance has disintegrated.
- Your brand no longer makes the emotional connections necessary for engagement.
- Your visual brand identity was created with a particular trend in mind, and now that the trend has ceased, your brand identity strategy is outdated.
- Your industry has changed in some way, and your visual brand identity needs to reflect that change.
- The spectrum of products and/or services you offer has either expanded or narrowed.
- Your brand was once local, but now it is expanding geographically.
- A current event or pop culture truth has made your brand identity a faux pas.
- Your brand has merged with, or acquired, another brand.
- Your logo is too similar to another, causing brand confusion.
- Technological advancements have changed your brand’s approach, its spectrum of services, the types of people it can benefit, etc.
As you can see, there are great advantages to rebranding and plenty of reasons to rethink your current brand identity strategy. The difficult part is determining whether or not NOW is the right time to take action.
In only a few hours’ time, and with no monetary investment, you can decide if NOW is the best time to recreate your brand identity strategy. Simply enrol in the How to Build a Brand Online Masterclass—part of our B.R.A.N.D. KickStarter course—at a time that’s convenient for you…to kick-start your brand for a brighter, more profitable, future.
