The Single Most Important Rule In Rebranding

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This is not the time to make little plans! We call it the “Golden Rule” of rebranding. It is the single most important goal when rebranding your organization, but also, the most challenging.

Embrace the future and be aspirational.

Define a new brand with elasticity to grow.

As we rebrand multiple organizations across a diverse range of industries each year, we encourage clients to take advantage of this one-in-a-lifetime, or once-in-a-career, opportunity to create a forward-facing organization that is able to grasp future opportunities. When you rebrand, it’s time to go big or go home as you are unlikely to rebrand the same organization again in the near future. So now is the time to grasp as much opportunity as possible. This is not the time to be cautious but to be brave in defining a new brand promise that not only helps you grab market share now, but will endure into the future.

It starts with a different point of view. We believe that rebranding is not a marketing strategy but an enterprise-wide strategic growth accelerator. Rebranding is the deliberate and systematic process of creating and inspired, forward-facing organization ready to grasp future opportunities with the alignment and dynamic portrayal of your unique differentiators to customers. It is the opportunity to put a jet pack on your business. It takes tremendous courage to grasp a new corporate name, a new look and feel, then what you have relied upon in the past.

Smart companies rebrand all the time, just look at 1Concier, Truist, Bravanti, Amita Health, or the Cleveland Indiana MLB team that renamed as the Cleveland Guardians. A successful rebranding should deliver the following:

1. An engaging new promise to customers that is the foundation of your new brand. It should make your brand more relevant to today’s customers but also be elastic and enduring to support your growth for years to come.

2. A dynamic new name, packed with meaning, that tells your corporate story in a fresh and differentiating new way.

3. An engaged team, from bottom to the top of the organization, that “gets” the new brand promise and is aligned to work hard to deliver it to customers every day.

4. An evolved culture that is based on a vision and values that focus employees toward delivering the brand promise.

5. A powerful new brand identity, from a logo, to palette and imagery, marketing tools, that visualize the promise of your new brand.

6. A new customer experience that is improved, feels demonstrably different, and builds a more emotional connection with customers.

7. New branded assets, ranging from your website and social platforms, to sales and product materials, signage, uniforms, vehicles and more.

8. Updated systems and tools updated to support the new brand promise.

9. A customer base that is reminded of why the partner with your and confident in the future of that relationship.

When we start the rebranding process with clients we’re excited when the CEO clearly sees the promise and encourages their internal teams to fully embrace the potential. In the words of Hamilton, this is not the time to “throw away your shot.” They know rebranding is a once in a generation initiative and don’t want to leave any opportunity on the table.