6 tips for a successful rebrand

A rebrand isn’t for the faint of heart

As marketers, we’re lucky to live at the intersection of so many teams. We support messaging and creative for both internal and external audiences. But that also means your to-do list is twice as long when there’s a rebrand in your future

A rebrand isn’t for the faint of heart. But often, it’s needed. Top reasons for embarking on one may include repositioning, new leadership, improving corporate identity, mergers or acquisitions and changing markets.

Sometimes the reason is smaller. Your branding may be outdated or inconsistent and it’s time for a change. Consider these statistics:

• Most companies consider rebranding every 7-10 years, with some brand smaller refreshes in between. (Entrepreneur)
• More than half of brand first impressions are visual (US Chamber of Commerce)
• Brand consistency can increase revenue by 10-20% (Lucidpress)

6 tips for implementing and communicating a successful rebrand

Regardless of your reason for a rebrand, if you’ve done your due diligence and decided it’s time to tackle one, here are six tips to make it successful.

1. Start with brand messaging

Your brand messaging is truly the foundation on which everything is built. Start by reviewing your brand platform and making any needed updates. This can include your:

• Mission statement
• Purpose statement
• Target personas
• Value proposition
• Brand personality
• Brand essence
• Brand tone and voice (which will impact your writing style guide)
• Tagline/slogan
• Boilerplate

Redefining brand messaging alone can take months and involve stakeholders from many departments. You want to ensure you’re capturing how you want your brand to show up, and leaders across the organization, from HR to business development to operations, will need to have a voice in this discussion.

Before moving on, get buy-in from your leadership team on changes to these elements. Your brand platform will be your North Star in the future.

2. Update your brand design

Now, it’s time to move to your design assets. This is what most people think of when they hear “rebrand” as it visually represents your brand. Review and update elements such as your:

• Logo, including variations and co-branding
• Logomark
• Typography and hierarchy
• Primary and secondary color palette
• Accessibility guidelines
• Brand elements, such as custom shapes
• Photography
• Iconography
• Illustrations
• Charts and graphs

3. Combine it all into a new brand guide – and share it

This is where the magic happens: combine all your messaging and design changes into one brand guide. It’s a visual representation of everything your internal team and external partners need to bring this rebranding to life.

Need some brand guide inspiration? Check out these brand guides from Walmart, Slack and Hulu.

Before you call it final, socialize it with your teams. Be open to feedback – even if you think you captured everything, your broader team might see a use case you didn’t consider. Plus, letting teams see it early ensures they feel included and will make them more likely to embrace the changes.

Once final, schedule an all-company meeting where you walk through the guide highlighting key changes. If you are part of a large organization, one meeting isn’t enough. Consider putting on a roadshow to visit different locations or campuses and meet with distributed team members in person. If you’re part of a national or global company, you could also record videos and distribute those on your intranet or in internal newsletters.

Be sure to let the team know the brand guide is a milestone in a much larger rollout of the brand. Which brings us to tip #4.

4. Prepare for rollout

You likely actually started this step before tip #1, but this is when you really dive in to the details of the rollout plan. Once you know your rebrand launch date, you want all required assets to be ready for showtime.

Remember, consistency is key for your brand. While every organization has unique needs, here’s a list to get you thinking of all that you’ll need to update:

Web needs

You could just do a logo swap and update colors, but you’ll likely want to take a more robust look at your web presence. Ask yourself:

• Are you serving new markets that need to be represented?
• Have you added new services?
• Does your entire website’s copy need to be rewritten to match the new tone and voice?
• Are you targeting new keywords and need to refresh the web copy to include them?
• Are your images and illustrations on-brand?

If you change your name, you’ll also need to investigate domain names, redirects, and update all your meta data.

If you have an intranet, you’ll also need to evaluate all of the copy and images on that platform. Inventory other digital platforms that could use the logo or brand color change: patient portals, HR portals, third-party directories, etc.

Internal team needs

Think about everything with your logo or name on it and make a list to get them updated. Some items to remember:

• Email addresses and signatures
• Business cards
• Internal documents – employee handbook, letterhead and invoices
• External documents – reports, presentations, client or customer documents, and patient documents (such as the summary of visit)
• Internal newsletters
• Logowear or uniforms
• Building signage

Marketing needs

Marketing teams create a lot of collateral. And the collateral changes if the organization is a B2C or a B2B. Either way, make sure you have a plan to get it all updated, both design and copy:

• Brochures
• Sales sheets, one-pagers and patient education materials
• Presentations
• Checklists or infographics
• Explainer videos or other videos
• Advertising – billboards, PPC, TV and radio
• Google Search Console and Google Business Profile
• Tradeshow booths or banners
• Social media – new handles, banner images, etc.
• External newsletters
• Podcasts or webinars

This list is not exhaustive, but it can be a good place to start.

5. Keep stakeholders in the loop

Will you change everything at one time or attack the rebrand in phases? The answer likely depends on your organization’s size and the number of assets that you need to update, but either way: keep your team in the loop. Consider:

• Establishing a rebrand team that meets routinely to help make decisions and disseminate information to the teams.
• Creating a communication plan that outlines each of the audiences that need to know about the rebrand, when you will tell them, how you will tell them (email, letter, etc.) and key messages you want to get across.
• Staggering internal team training sessions on different portions of the rebrand at different times so no one feels overwhelmed.

Some organizations choose to launch internally first, often called a soft launch. This helps everyone get used to the changes and eliminates any unforeseen obstacles before the rebrand goes public.

6. Build excitement internally and externally

While it feels like a lot of work at times, a rebrand is an exciting time in an organization. Treat it like a celebration. Some ideas to get the rebrand party started:

Internal:

• Walk the team through the rebrand story again and make sure they are comfortable with it so they can be effective brand ambassadors.
• Throw a party (over Teams or Zoom if needed) and play games that revolve around the brand.
• Hand out new branded swag to team members.

External:

• Build excitement with key partners, clients, customers or patient groups.
• Prepare any PR or other announcements.
• Use social to get the word out with engaging graphics or videos about the rebrand.

Need help with your rebrand?

Whether you’re a large health system or a small B2B start-up, managing all the content changes that come with a rebrand can be more than an internal team can handle. Especially if you are redesigning your website at the same time.

If you want to work with writers and strategists who can help with everything from updating brand messaging and writing style guides, to digging in and updating all that content, we’re ready. Drop us a line and let’s talk about your big brand dreams!

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Heather Stanley

A born storyteller, Heather has 20 years of experience managing…