Why is rebranding important
Staying relevant, only 25% of brands stick to their brand guideline. Brands don’t exist in a vacuum, and there is movement in all parts of society and the economy.
Now it’s easier than ever to create a new brand and business. The internet has given access to information previous that was hard to access. So with new brands starting all the time, it’s important to keep your brand as fresh as possible. While rebranding is exciting, keep in mind what is working about the brand.
Just a rebranding isn’t enough
When not to rebrand?
Your branding is working perfectly well. Don’t fix what isn’t broken. Don’t just rebrand just because other people are rebranding. Is this just shiny object syndrome, Facebook is rebranding, we should too, and Madonna is having her 19th rebrand we should too. It’s important to weigh up the costs involved, printed materials, and branded vehicles all add to the overall cost of a rebrand or brand direction change.
Rebranding.
Companies can’t be grown through repeat business your current customers will obviously know you but eventually, they won’t need your services anymore, depending on what consumers you are marketing to, this determines the type of relationship you will be having with them. B2C consumers have a much higher chance of returning to buy consumer goods, in B2B there is a chance that you won’t ever do business with the same business more than once.
Rebranding won’t be changed overnight
However, we can still continue our current marketing efforts while rebranding takes place
It’s hard to rebrand when you’re not in the same demographic or psychographic
A great marketer can see things from everyone’s point of view
It’s important not to decide for the customer, you must know what they want, by listening to them.
A spiky point of view.
A spiky point of view is what other brands can disagree with, this is another way to differentiate from other brands. If you don’t then you’re just appealing to everyone, so you appeal to no one. Having a strong point of view is better than not having a view at all. It’s hard to imitate, so don’t.
What makes a point of view spiky?
- It can be debated
- If everyone agrees with you, it’s too middle of the road
- Teaches you something
- You want people to reconsider their point of view
- Don’t have a spiky point of view just to be contrarian
We want to attract people with similar views, we should attract similar people with similar points of view
Basecamp built its brand with a spiky point of view
“Companies have an unhealthy obsession with fast growth and unrealistic expectations”
An example spiky point of view could be what the owner of sales force did, which was to say that their software shouldn’t have to be installed on data centres at a companies premises, it should be in the cloud and at the time this was a spiky point of view. He was one of the first to promote SASS
We’ve all read something like this and thought “YES, finally someone understands what I’m talking about”
Questions to ask yourself to come up with a spiky point of view
- What are 3 – 5 points of view you have about your field?
- What’s something that others might disagree with?
- What do you wish more people understood
This is an opportunity to say what you feel like, this customer who doesn’t agree might not be a customer anyways. While you lose the interest of some you will get the interest or new other existing
If you try to communicate too much too soon, you lose the person’s interest.
Sometimes content requires too much thinking to understand. It might not be interesting enough to listen to in the moment, you might be bringing difficulty into their lives at the wrong point. When they are at a different point in the funnel, give them that vital piece of information. When they have buy in, its at the point you give them the details.
It’s like welcoming customers into the store and then bombarding them with details about the product, or going on a first date and almost asking them to marry you straight away.
People think they’re logical but they aren’t, brands concentrate on the logical and not so much the emotional aspect
We are affected by
Packaging
How a product makes us feel
How words sound
These are subconscious clues before we even want the logical information
References:
Book: Brands and branding – Rita Clifton with 9 other writers
Book: No Logo – Naomi Klein
Book: Brand Identity – Sheldon Leonard
Book: Unleash possible – Samantha stone
Book: Positioning, The battle for your mind – Al Ries and Jack Trout
Linkedin Learning: Agile branding is the new normal – Wes Kao
Linked in learning: Branding Foundations – Drew Boyd
Interview: CMO Norman de Greve, CVS Health
Interview: CMO, Suzanne Kounkel, Deloitte
Interview: CMO, Alicia Tillman, SAP (B2B)