The AV industry is always evolving, and your brand should too. If you are someone
who wants to make sure that you are always up to date with the current market trends and ready to take on the competition, then it may be time to rebrand your business.
Why do I need a Brand?
If you are an entrepreneur, a business, or maybe you offer professional services, you already know that having a “brand” is essential to being known in the industry. In other words, your brand represents who you are as a business and what people see, think and experience when it comes to your company. At the most, branding is a distinct identity that your target market will use to easily relate to and remember who you are in the business.
Branding usually includes a logo, your unique visual design, your mission, and products that are uniquely yours. With that being said, if your business or company has been in the industry for quite a while, as market conditions continue to change that might mean your brand needs a little revamping too.
What is rebranding?
Rebranding is a popular strategy used by businesses, organizations, and other professional services, even in some instances, sports teams, to improve their value and relevance. Rebranding typically aims to change how a customer perceives your products or services, or the firm as a whole.
It is the process of giving your existing product or business a fresh look and feel. This is meant to revive your brand and make it appear more contemporary and relevant to the consumer's demands.
What Does it Mean to Rebrand?
A company could have different reasons why they want to rebrand. Some might want to reposition the company and vision to reflect a shift in focus, others might be focused on differentiating the business from rivals, modernizing the corporate image to appeal to a younger market, extending the reach of the company, or reflecting a substantial merger or acquisition are all possible reasons for a rebrand.
However, it is also important take a further look at branding from a different perspective, which is knowing its parts – reputation, and visibility.
Your brand is your reputation
Remember when we said your brand is a part of your identity and what people say about it? The reputation of your brand is based on what the experience has been of your customers, how you performed in the past years, or if people are talking about it, regardless of if it is positive or negative.
As much as possible, you want to have positive feedback, but that is not always the case. These days in a highly influenced market, consumers want to get their money’s worth and if there is even a slight flaw from your products or services, this may draw in some bad comments.
Because social media has become a powerful platform for almost everything we see or hear, a negative comment or feedback can make or break a company’s reputation.
But aside from that, your reputation can also be the image, colors, or messaging that stimulate the emotions of your brands audience and relevance. Your company’s reputation can separate you from the rest of the market, and this will greatly affect people’s perception of your brand.
Your brand should have visibility
For your brand to be successful, it should be visible. Your brand must be exposed to different platforms to reach its target market. Brands that are memorable in the minds of consumers have greater reach and visibility.
The more people who have heard about your brand or business, the easier it will be to grow your audience and network.
5 Reasons Why You Should Rebrand
According to research, businesses and organizations change their branding once every 7-10 years. We all must accept that change is constant, and if you don’t take steps to update your brand, it can have a negative effect on your business.
These are a few of the reasons why your business might choose to rebrand:
1. Outdated Branding
Your company may have been around for a while. If so, your brand may be suffering and your company may appear “old” as a result of your color scheme or design from the 1990s. It could be possible that your brand is no longer relevant to your audience including your workplace.
Modernization is a part of an evolving business. It is important to ensure that your brand also becomes modernized, so it has a greater chance at avoiding being left behind by the competition. The more you hold onto your outdated brand, the stronger the possibility that you lose business growth, including potential customers.
Old Spice is probably one of my favorite examples of a brand being outdated, then repositioned. Old Spice is a 90-year old company that was popular in the 60’ and 70’s, and stayed popular with those aging fans. But in 2010, they rebranded in a fun way with their campaign. They went from smelling like Grandpa to “the Man You Wish Your Man Could Smell Like”, aimed at a younger audience.
2. Brand Repositioning
Companies frequently reinvent their brands to appeal to a new audience or even their target market. Repositioning a brand and making it stand out in the marketplace will benefit greatly from rebranding.
A good example of this is Dunkin Donuts. Earlier this year they decided to drop the Donuts. Don’t panic, they didn’t literally drop the Donuts, just the word. Their new campaign “America Runs on Dunkin” is a nationwide movement that supports the American people as they pursue their busy and tiring lives to keep up with American culture and pursue their desires.
3. Outgrow a Bad Reputation
It is a part of the challenge that some businesses can get hit with a bad reputation. That’s okay though, rebranding is one of the best solutions to refresh your business and change the way people perceive and feel about your brand.
For years, Domino’s Pizza was thought of as “garbage pizza”. In an attempt to overcome their bad pizza reputation, they modified their recipe and launched a new marketing campaign centered on their "new fresh and better" pizza with their “Pizza Turnaround” campaign.
4. Mergers and Acquisitions
When two businesses combine, you choose whether to run the brands independently or together. To establish trust, growing your new brands recognition can help greatly to avoid confusion. This way, you can choose to operate under an existing brand identity or create a new merged brand identity. In some situations, a partial rebranding is acceptable.
We’ve seen a lot of this over the years in AV. Large integration firms acquiring smaller firms, and merging identities. There’s always a bit of confusion on the customer both on the outside and internal as well.
5. Needs to Stand Out from the Rest
A lot of the time, businesses don’t fully understand the importance of having strong branding. They take it for granted and use generic branding for their business.
Having generic branding is a problem since you’ll likely be competing with many others who have names that sound similar to yours, and logos that are almost identical. Given how similar many brands appear, brand recognition can be challenging.
When customers and even potential customers cannot distinguish your brand from that of your competitors, especially when your product offers are the same or similar, brand loyalty cannot be developed.
If this is the case, rebranding is the best option to ensure that you stand out from your competitors.
When is the right time to rebrand?
If you’re still unsure about if it’s a good time to rebrand, then here are some questions that you might want to ask yourself.
Are you going to enter a new market?
Do you have fewer leads these days?
Will you be introducing a new product or service?
Do you feel that your company’s growth has stopped or reached a plateau?
Are there new competitors in the market with the same product or service as you?
Does your logo, mission statement, and other aspects of your business seem to be outdated?
Are you struggling to attract new customers?
If you’ve answered yes to at least two questions from the list, then it is time for you to consider REBRANDING your business.
This is a 5-part series where we will dig deeper into the right strategies on how to rebrand your business and the importance of each step along the way.
In the next Marketing Out Loud Blog, we will discuss the process of effectively rebranding your company to find your new success. Stay tuned.