There are a lot of sources on the internet about rebranding. Industries have been created and people who understand it’s value, are sought after, to share their expertise with businesses and industries whose expertise is other.
The subject of branding and rebranding is huge and a year of blogs would probably not cover it. So I am looking at it in its simplest capacity and to me, that’s rooted in common sense.
<p.Corporations are like people, the name derives from the Latin corporare ‘combine in one body’ and as such they are treated as a single entity in the business world. As ‘people’, corporations survive and grow through their relationships with other people, just as individuals do. There is no single person in the world who doesn’t change over time and no couple whose relationship doesn’t have to evolve in order to survive and thrive throughout these changes.
Companies grow, increase their expertise and the way in which they operate, and throughout this process, relationships change. Some clients and companies evolve alongside them, some move off in other directions, new client organisations partner up as your offering more closely fits their needs. Rebranding is a way of communicating these changes in your organisation and offers an opportunity to engage with your current clients about how you’ve changed. It also gives a fresh momentum to an organisation, giving them the opportunity to reach out to new clients. It is a refreshing and powerful process and in no way starts or stops with a change of colour palette or logo.
Over the course of the modern marketing age there have been many successes and failures in the translation of a company’s evolution to its consumers. Success seems to be built on integral company / product changes which are meaningful to their consumers alongside a marketing / brand campaign which successfully communicates those changes to their existing and new client bases. A few time old success-classics include the original cocaine based Coca-Cola which, without a name or logo change, rebranded over time to become a de-facto family-fun soft drink.
Other great successes are the likes of Apple who at one time tagged its branding onto the strength of IBM’s ‘I think therefore IBM’ with their own ‘Think Different’, thus rooting themselves in the tech market while marking themselves out as a new direction in computing. Burberry is another brand who has successfully navigated the changing tides of consumer culture. Once synonymous with well-heeled gentility it moved through a troubling reinvention in the early 2000’s. A sudden injection of cool alongside resulted in downgrading the brand leaving it exposed to a plethora of cheap imitations. Burberry cleverly moved forward, retelling it’s historical story from Victorian times to the present in an intricate digital space, with live streamed fashion shows and intense social media engagement.
So, why did we rebrand? After 12 years in business and a team growth of around 500%, we’ve changed. Our team now consists of leading strategists, project managers, designers, illustrators, animators and developers. Together we create compelling brand identities, winning bids and tenders and innovative digital and print solutions. Our old brand no longer reflected our confidence and abilities, or accurately described who we are. So we needed bold new mark with which we could communicate our evolving story.
Tara Cloak is Creative Director at NU Creative, specialists in design and branding.
NU Creative have been supporting companies like HIREWORKS, CHaL and Gerald Edelman with their creative projects. We are passionate about creating truly stand out brands for our clients. Get in touch to find out how we can help you evolve.
