Rebranding is a risky business. It can be expensive, time-consuming and painful. This means it’s not a decision to take lightly.You’re not just considering the colour palette and typography; a rebrand embodies the full customer experience, including your tone of voice, email templates, investor updates, newsletter and more. Essentially, it will affect every interaction your customer has with your business.

Consider why you need a rebrand

Before you start a rebrand, your first consideration should be why you think you need it in the first place. Is your branding looking tired and outdated and in need of a refresh? Does it no longer align with your company values? Maybe it’s not entirely clear what your business offers and who it will benefit. Determining this will not only help you decide if a full rebrand is a necessary endeavour, but it will also help to shape the decisions you make down the road.

Skein look at different approaches you can take when undergoing a rebrand.  

Take it slowly

If you’re a larger business with a lot of different branding elements to consider, think about taking these in steps rather than trying to focus on everything at the same time. This is called a ‘recut’; a small, considered improvement to a single experience. Taking small steps at a time will help prepare you for any major changes you work towards in the future and will allow you to discern both staff and customer reactions and respond to feedback.  

To prioritise recuts, focus on obvious problems such as updating a slow-reactive website or refining your tone of voice guide.

Update what you already have

Completely changing your existing brand is a huge undertaking and not always necessary. It’s much easier to use what you already have as a starting point and work from there. This also helps to retain your recognisability to your customers. Think about breaking the process down into phases and allocating your resources wisely; there’s a good chance you may need to outsource some work if the skillsets you need aren’t present or available.

Consider any hurdles you may experience on the way and workout a plan to mitigate these if/when they arise. Ensure you take on board feedback from those around you but don’t try to please everyone all the time; there will rarely be an option everyone is 100% happy with.

Start over  

If you are considering renaming your business as a part of the rebrand, this will mean a lot of work. At this point, not only will you need to consider the design elements of the branding, but you will also need to jump through legal barriers, apply for domain names, manage your PR tactics and much more. Such a decision should be taken with trepidation but that’s not to say the payoff won’t be worth it when executed properly.

At Skein, we can help you to determine whether you need a full brand overhaul, an update of existing elements or just some tweaks here and there. By helping you in both your design and marketing strategies, we can advise on and implement changes to help breathe fresh life into your branding.To find out more, get in touch.  

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Photo by Dietmar Becker on Unsplash