Rebranding to remain relevant

We frequently can be heard saying to our clients “When you get bored of your branding, your clients are just beginning to become familiar with it.” We don’t take branding lightly. Brand equity can take time to build and changing your brand without any real purpose can diminish your overall brand value. So when we’re approached to partner for a rebrand, we begin in understanding why a rebrand has been put on the table in the first place.

Rebranding for relevancy

Many times at the top of the list is to remain relevant with your client base and target audience. Your brand is no longer resonating with your target market or appearing to align with their values. Or it’s feeling old and stuffy compared to newer brands that are in the market.

But rebranding to remain relevant shouldn’t be like dressing in the trendiest outfit you can find, heading out to the newest club, and then posting crazy antics all over social. When we do that, it’s not too long before we regret the whole thing and go back to the old version of ourselves. Or worse, our new found clients realize we are posing as something we’re not. At the end of the day, we realize that we can’t pull off something that’s different from who we really are.

Rebranding to remain relevant still means remaining authentic and true to your brand attributes and values. Changing to trendy styles, colours, or messaging, when it’s not who you really are, will feel off when clients begin to interact with your company.

Where to begin

When beginning a rebrand to remain relevant, we start with reviewing:

• Your historical journey up to this point
• How your core values have changed from when you began
• The core values of your target audience
• How the industry has evolved over time

This serves as the foundation for developing a new brand that feels more relevant and better resonates with your target audience. 

The story behind why rebranding for relevancy is always slightly different. One of our favourite team projects where we rebranded a client to remain relevant is Giffen Lawyers. In all cases, we really dig in to understand the core values and what clients were looking for.

Another example we love is the King Arthur Baking rebrand. As a 200+ year old company, they returned to their roots as a baking company to remain relevant to and resonate with their clients.