Rebranding is an essential milestone in every brand’s journey. It does not always mean starting from scratch. Companies also consider different types of rebranding in these scenarios:

• Mergers and acquisitions
• New product launches
• Entry into new markets
• Or temporary pivots like many businesses have done during the COVID-19 Pandemic

But knowing why you’re rebranding doesn’t change the fact that it can be a daunting process.

Your brand is your identity. Your name, fame, and position in the market depend on it. It’s hard to let go and embrace changes.

But, trust us, if done right, rebranding can take your business to new heights. The pertinent phrase being, “if done right”.

So Kimp is bringing you a comprehensive guide to help you rebrand your business in 2021 so that you know what you are getting into. 

Before we dive into the process, let’s take a look at why you should do this. How can rebranding help your business? 

Let’s go.

Changing with the times – A look at how pivoting and rebranding helps businesses

As we said, rebranding is a natural process for any business today. Customer expectations and market sentiments change every few months. So businesses cannot afford to stick to the same old image when it becomes irrelevant.

When you rebrand your business, you allow yourself to reach new clients and bigger opportunities.

Your brand is your identity in the market. It helps you reach and connect with customers. This means it not only gets their attention but helps to bridge the gap between what they think you are and who you actually are. 

All this to say, branding is very crucial for your business. Aand if you are making a major pivot or update, the branding has to reflect that.

By rebranding, you can:

1. Appeal to your changed customer demographic
2. Communicate your updates and new products more powerfully 
3. Save costs on advertising to announce the recent changes. Once you rebrand, your marketing will consistently reinforce who you are now. And you won’t need separate campaigns to reinforce this. 
4. Be transparent with your customer to inspire brand loyalty and awareness. 
5. Stay on top of current events when updating the branding for a smaller period. More about this in the coming sections on how to successfully rebrand your business.

The Significance of Visual Identity when you Rebrand your Business

Your visual tools such as your logo, imagery, package design, web page design, color palette, typography choice, and overall style have a specific role to play in branding efforts.

Visual mediums appeal more to people than any other medium. This is why Instagram and YouTube rank high on the list of most used social media sites. 

Customers understand, remember, and connect with your brand at every touchpoint. By prioritizing design and visual tools in your rebranding strategy, you ensure that the new messaging reaches customers more efficiently. 

To summarize, if you want your rebrand to be successful, you need two things:

1. A clear rebranding strategy
2. A visual identity that translates the messaging across all marketing and advertising mediums.

Having said that, let’s explore how you can plan that rebranding strategy and build a visual identity that makes the rebranding a success. 

How to Successfully Rebrand your Business – A comprehensive Guide + Examples 

Business spends eons building a brand that customers trust and connect with. So, a rebranding process has the added responsibility of not undoing any of those efforts. 

A successful rebrand helps you provide a fresh perspective to your existing customers while also allowing you to reach new customers. While this may sound straightforward, even big brands have had unpleasant experiences with rebranding.

So, how do you make your rebranding process a success? What is the game plan that makes this dream a reality? 

Scroll below to find out.

1) Define Objective 

For a successful rebranding, set your objective straight. Your reason to rebrand your business will determine its success or failure.  

The rule with branding is always to let the story guide your branding elements, content tone, and messaging for authenticity. 

A rebrand may feel imminent for a business, in situations like: 

1. Business growth or market expansion 
2. Current branding not aligning with business  goals or brand personality 
3. Customer demographic changing
4. The current COVID-19 pandemic where the purchase process, customer expectation, and normal life changed as we know it. 

Besides defining the reason for your business rebranding, you must determine if it is a permanent rebrand/revamp or a temporary revamp to cater to specific circumstances. 

For example, the “Made in Bhutan” campaign chose its objective of promoting products and services made, or originating, in Bhutan by highlighting its culture and values. The rebranding was then able to revamp the country’s image from a generic Himalayan country to one brimming with unique culture and value. Today, these signature colors and designs remind people of Bhutan wherever they see them. 

Before the rebrand, Bhutan had a very generic brand with no clear objectives as seen above. The rebrand was successful in depicting the country as a cultural hub. This was possible because the designers had a clear brief as to the objective.

Kimp Tip:

A well-defined objective will clue the designer into the preferred approach to branding. For example, for a temporary pivot or an addition to the existing business, a designer will work with existing elements and enhance or add to them. This helps you keep our existing customer loyalty while also donning a new avatar.

2) Objective-driven rebranding 

Got the goal and the overall purpose of rebranding your business sorted? Good, it is time to figure out your rebranding plan. Like you would do with your branding strategies, you must:

1. Build a brand personality that aligns with goals and objectives in Step 1. 
2. Research, study and understand the needs of your customer base to find the best way to get the messaging across.
3. Decide if you are going local or global with the rebranding. 
4. Choose the marketing channels you will focus on (web, print, social media) so that the content and marketing materials are consistent across them.
5. Involve employees, stakeholders, focus groups, and market experts in the rebranding process to understand and evaluate different perspectives before going any further. 

Kimp Tip:

Implementing Design thinking helps you find a successful way to implement rebranding. Design thinking puts customers first, and when you deliver what the customer seeks, it always ends in success. Check out Kimp’s guide on Design thinking and its relevance in marketing for more details on this.

3) Content Marketing 

With your goals, objectives, and rebranding strategy ready – what should you do next? A successful rebrand depends on that brand reaching far and wide. 

The best way to achieve this is via content marketing. Content marketing helps you take the message and purpose of your rebranding to customers both online and offline.

For the rebranding to really take root in customers’ minds, your content marketing plan must include: 

1. An updated content style and tone.
2. A primary content marketing platform based on the target audience for rebranding.
3. Content repurposing plan for a wider reach.
4. Content ideas to suit the new brand personality. For example, if the rebrand gives your brand a youthful feel to reach a younger demographic – choosing Instagram Reels, YouTue Shorts, Memes, podcasts, and GIFs will better suit the rebrand than blogs, articles, or newsletters. 
5. Announcement plans (more on this later). 

Lego is a crowd favorite today. But did you know that the brand has had some dark days? Yes, the company came close to shutting its doors but pulled out by its revamped content marketing strategy. The firm went digital and revamped its content marketing strategy on digital platforms and is now known for many viral campaigns.

The company knew that young millennials are their target audience and switched to Instagram, Youtube, and Facebook to reach them. 

Kimp Tip:

Content marketing performs better with well-designed visual aids. It enhances your content and improves its readability. Especially in long-form content like blogs, articles, white papers – choose designs that match your rebranding campaign, so customers consume more of it.

4) Rebrand Your Business’ Visual Identity 

This step arguably is one of the most significant parts of a rebranding campaign. We discussed the importance of visual identity to make rebranding successful.

So, what are the elements you should focus on? How can you ensure that your visual identity matches your rebranding objectives? What are the touch points you should focus on? 

• Let’s start with the basic design elements (Logo, Typography, Color Palette, and Imagery ) to understand this:
  
  The beauty of the design is that our brain interprets different emotions and cues from it. Your design team will help you capitalize on this. Different logo designs such as Wordmark, Abstract Design, or Monogram align with a particular business model. Similarly, color palettes signify your brand personality to the customer.
  
  Build a design brief that includes your rebranding objective, brand personality, and peer companies with similar profiles to ensure your visual identity is on point for the rebranding campaign.
• With the new and improved visual identity, update all immediate customer-facing touchpoints such as website, social media profiles, newsletter templates, business cards, storefront designs, signages, and more. This move will ensure customers get familiar with the rebrand and further propel brand awareness. 
• Revise all marketing material templates and designs in line with your target demographic, choice of marketing medium, and more. 
• Create an updated brand style guide so that you can purge the old commandments from the system to ensure consistency in branding across all channels.

Above is an example of rebranding a visual identity for an Orchestra – the Helsinki Philharmonic. The design uses symbolism to represent the connection to music notes and the choice of black and white colors brings out the brand’s personality clearly.

Kimp Tip:

When you create a visual identity, consider if it works across all marketing mediums such as web, print, and entertainment. Your visual identity must work with your brand identity and provide a cohesive experience to customers.

Designing for web and print is tricky, and you need someone who can deliver a uniform output across color systems used for both. Check out our guide on this here. 

For an easier rebranding experience, choose Kimp Graphics and get a dedicated team equipped to deliver results right from the first draft to finalized designs.

5) Experimentation and Feedback 

Rebranding is not something you wake up one day, plan and execute the next day. It is a major step for your business. And it is a mistake to not allow yourself to experiment and gather feedback before going all in.

Once the brand identity and the visual tools are ready, it is time for a planned experimentation and soft rollout:

1. Begin with soft launches, teasers, and controlled announcements via focus groups, existing customers, and email lists. This allows you to test the waters, gather feedback, and revise the parts that don’t work as well as you thought with no major impact.
2. Design email marketing campaigns and loyalty programs that allow you to reach out to people. 
3. Create short video teasers, branded stories, and mini-marketing campaigns on social media to understand how customers feel about the concept of rebrand itself. 

They say marketing is mostly a series of A/B tests. We are here to tell you that the success of a rebranding campaign is very much the same. For any rebranding element like a logo, website design, product packaging, and social media templates, experiment and understand customer sentiment. 

Social listening a.k.a paying attention to what customers say about you online after a rebranding update can help you immediately make changes and gain their trust. Customer surveys via email marketing, website, and social media can help in this regard. 

Kimp Tip:

Announcement posts have to be catchy enough for people to engage. Choose video formats over text for a wider reach. Similarly, customers don’t always respond to surveys. Design an interesting and eye-catchy email marketing campaign with enough incentives for them to follow through on it.

Rebrand your Business in 2021 with Kimp

This guide’s core message is that rebranding campaigns are a marathon, not a sprint. So, you need someone who will stick with you in this long journey and ensure that you get all the help you need.

And that’s Kimp for you. Why? 

• Kimp is a comprehensive design service provider and can handle the entire process without you needing to find and onboard new designers.
• Our subscription-based model allows you to experiment and tweak as needed without worrying about hidden fees. 
• You ask, and we deliver, usually in 24 hours. Now, that’s quick, isn’t it? Implement all your ideas as they come to you. 
• Kimp’s Graphics and Video teams can seamlessly create marketing and branding material in both formats without hampering consistency. 
• You get a dedicated design team so that you don’t have to repeat any instruction twice. 

If you feel you need more convincing, (We hope not!), sign up for the 7-day free trial today and experience all this yourself.