EMBiz: Rebranding: What? When? Why?

Cody H. Owens

Hi—Cody here, Content Director of Elevate My Brand. And in this EMBiz video, I'm going to be talking about rebranding: what is it, why it's important, and when you should do it.

We get a lot of clients who come to us for branding and rebranding work. So it's really important for us to operationalize and contextualize what really this is and why it's important.

What is rebranding?

First of all, branding and rebranding is about determining the core identity of your business and institutionalizing all of that into a brand book that says this is how we look, this is how we think and this is how we talk, so that it is cohesive across the business from all departments. Especially as you scale, it’s important that everyone understands who the business is at its core branding. We say at EMB it is about making sure that who you say you are and who everyone else says you are is the same thing.

So rebranding is essentially taking a business that already has a brand and rethinking it. That can be completely all-encompassing where you change everything about yourself, or it could be just in little bits. It could be that the visuals are still working for you, but the messaging has completely changed or vice versa. So, rebranding projects are all about examining, first of all, why you need to rebrand and then determining what the solutions to those challenges are in terms of your visuals, your content and your strategy around your identity. It's a big conversation and it involves a lot. But there are some major reasons why people might go through a rebranding process. We have four of those that are some of the most common ones.

4 reasons why you need to rebrand

I'm going to walk through those and why you might want to actually rebrand. 

1. Your brand is outdated

Number one is that you feel a little outdated, maybe you did your branding 10 years ago and the visuals feel a little outdated. So it kind of looks like it has an early 2010’s aesthetic or something and it doesn't feel like it's fresh, it doesn't feel like it's relevant to modern audiences. Ahat might be a reason and you need to reflect your growth as an institution, as an organization or a business. So if you feel a little outdated, then you need to kind of change things up. Also, maybe your products, maybe your skews have expanded and now you have way more to offer the world. The way that you've been positioning yourself and the way that your logo looks don't reflect everything anymore. So being outdated is the number one reason why we see people wanting to go through a rebranding process.

2. Your brand has grown

Number two is that new markets, new products. So kind of like I was saying is that maybe you have a new product or service and now you need to attract a new kind of customer base and perhaps your current logo or currently the way that you talk to your audience isn't as resonant with this new audience that you're trying to attract. So you need to kind of go in and maybe keep your logo the same, keep your marketing strategies the same, but change how you talk about yourself and about your products and talk to people and engage them online. So that's one of the reasons why you would wanna go through a rebranding process.

3. Your brand has new values

The third one is values shift, not only within the company but also just within the larger world. Things happen all of the time and especially as new generations come up, there's gonna be new conversations, new ideas and concepts to engage with and maybe you are going to change your ideals. Maybe you need to refine them and make sure that they are fitting within a modern world. So you need to reflect or re-evaluate your ethos, maybe you have brought on new people that have elevated your business and your brand in a way where now you stand for things that you didn't stand for before. So you need to be able to communicate that to people.

4. Your brand has merged

And then the fourth most common one you see is obviously a merger. If you obtain or acquire some other business or, you know, two companies come together or you find that you're not even necessarily merging but doing a lot of collaborations in a particular like segment of an industry. And you need to make sure that your branding, your visuals, your content is reflective of that. Then you might want to go through a rebranding process in order to, you know, even if it's as simple as changing the name of the business to reflect both brands, just sort of a portmanteau of the two names. Then obviously, you're gonna have to change your logo, maybe your content, your strategy is the exact same, but you just have to have a new visual for the brand.

What’s next?

So those are some of the most common reasons why people will go through a rebranding. Your content builds outdated, you're going into a new market, your values have shifted or maybe you merge with another company. Those are reasons why you might want to go through a rebrand. 

If you think that one of those are applicable to you and you want to go through a rebranding process, please talk to us to elevate my brand. The first part of that stage is just going through understanding your challenges and determining if a rebranding is right for you. And if so what parts we need to focus on. And then we'll strategically take you through our discovery phase and do branding mind maps and all of that to determine how we need to move forward. So if you're interested in a rebrand, let's talk!