Why a brand refresh is the smart choice
Rejuvenate don’t start again
Once I believed a brand design would last for years (around 10 or so). But now I think times have changed. With the current trend for recycling and not buying new. Why not apply this same thinking to your brand and do a brand refresh.
Life moves fast and people seem to crave constant newness. After 5 years or fewer, companies need to seriously review where they are in their market. A brand review and subsequent refresh will give them a chance to highlight their unique position in the marketplace, reinforce their value, and gain a new perspective on what lies ahead. This review process should happen to a lesser extent every year. There are a couple of ways of dealing with this.
- Design a brand that has no trendy fashion elements to it. Something that is classically stylish and will remain so for some time to come.
- View your brand as a tactical advantage in your market and look at ways to refresh and update it every few years. This will keep it current and relevant to its market and business objectives.
Sometimes it’s not just that the market you are in has moved on, it could be an internal change to the business that may necessitate a refresh.
Evolving your brand can be the smartest option
Creatives have an inbuilt need to start again. You can’t blame them because in most instances that’s what they train and get paid for. But then again, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Sometimes the smart decision is to evolve and make what you have work much harder. See how society, business or markets have changed and adjust your brand to reflect this accordingly. Especially in today’s climate when money is tight, a brand refresh may be all you need to keep staying relevant and ensure your brand’s tone of voice is on point.
Always take a long term view
What’s in today will be out tomorrow. Try not to pick up on the latest trend with your branding, take the long term view that great taste will never go out of fashion. Take Barbour for instance over the years their core products have remained looking very similar. Their brand core is still in keeping with today’s market. Yes, they’ve edited and updated and added to keep it fresh. But wear a Barbour jacket from 20 years ago in Oxford Street and no one’s going to think you old fashioned or out of date.
Make sure your brand agency speaks your language
Design companies all have their own process and buzzwords to describe this process to their clients. This can be very intimidating and confusing for prospective clients. The best companies talk straight and don’t use industry jargon. All agency processes, usually follow this pattern:
- Brief
- Research
- Thinking and discussing
- Design
- Testing the design’s robustness
- Iteration depending on consumer/client feedback
Any company that tries to confuse with complexity may not be a great fit for your brand refresh.
Test the fit of your brand refresh
With branding, as with furniture and clothes, always make sure that whatever you buy fits. It needs to be an evolution and feel like it belongs alongside everything else your company is doing. Ask yourself. Does it speak the same visual language? Does it have the same tone of voice in its written word? Do you and your customers feel really comfortable with it?
Less drift, more brand focus
Ensure that when you go through your brand refresh or any brand exercise for that matter. That the objectives you started out with are the ones you have achieved in the end. It’s easy to get sidetracked and to sway off course. Check the questions you asked initially are the ones you answered.
- What’s the problem we want to fix?
- What can we do to fix it?
- Have we achieved this?
One word of caution
Don’t think just because business is good today it will remain so tomorrow. The only way to stay relevant is to overtake the competition. Keep innovating, adjust and review constantly. Respond to market and consumer changes as soon as you can. Don’t get caught out like the music industry when Apple came along with its iPod. Constant review and refresh are the only way forward for a modern business to stay in business. I hope this article has been useful to you. Thanks for reading.
Photo by Olav Ahrens Røtne on Unsplash