• 6 Ways To Refresh Your Brand And Maintain An Identity Authentication
• 6 Ways To Refresh Your Brand And Maintain An Identity Authentication
• 6 Ways To Refresh Your Brand And Maintain An Identity Essay

Sep 11, 2013 It reflects your brand identity. A strong logo gives people a sense of what you do and who you do it for. Obviously, a single image can’t say it all. But in subtle and even subconscious ways, it can say a lot. Think of Nike’s swoosh as an example. The swoosh logo creates the impression of motion and speed. Yet it’s through your connections to other people that you find the biggest rewards. Deepen your relationships with friends, family, your partner, peers, and coworkers using these tips. Smiling at another person is one of the simplest ways to connect with them, and it only takes a second. Give your internal brand an identity – and align it with the external. Your external brand is defined; it will typically have its own logo, font, set colors, perhaps a determined tone of voice, its own taglines, key statements, look and feel. Why shouldn’t your internal brand have the same?

There are a million things to think about when you embark on a rebrand. You need to make sure you’re doing it for the right reason, you need to have the right team, and above all, you need buy-in from everybody. (See our total guide to complete a rebrand to make sure you’ve done things correctly at each stage.)

You may have the best branding ever, but if it isn’t implemented well or properly rolled out, it won’t make the impact you want it to. Thus, it’s important to make a rebrand plan—before you launch. Luckily, there are several things you can do to make your rebrand rollout less stressful.

5 Tips to Help You Launch Your Rebrand

From visual assets to briefing your team, here’s how to deploy a rebrand and set yourself up for long-term success.

1)Prep from the Beginning

As they say, “If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.” One of the best ways to make your rebrand go smoothly (and save everyone’s sanity) is to anticipate, prepare, and spot pitfalls as much as possible. Part of this includes planning for your rollout ahead of time.

Who will need to be notified? Who will prep assets? When will you launch? Who will need to prepare announcements? Who should answer press questions? Create timelines and checklists, assign point people, and try to equip every department with the tools and info they need. That way you can ensure everyone is hitting deadlines—and, even better, spot opportunities to use resources more effectively.

2)Prepare Touchpoints

You don’t want to launch your website with a fresh new logo, then hand out business cards with the old one. Once you launch your rebrand, it should be effective immediately, with any and all required assets boasting the new branding.

If you’re in limbo, it has negative effects on both the external perception of your brand and internal participation because:

• Visual inconsistency reduces the impact of the big rebrand reveal.
• It’s confusing for your team, making it harder for them to follow/enforce new branding guidelines.

To make sure nothing falls through the cracks, here’s a handy checklist of items that may need to be updated:

• Administration
  • Email addresses
  • Email signatures
  • Business cards
  • Internal documents (employee handbook, financial documents)
  • External documents (sales materials, presentations)
  • Financial materials (e.g., invoices)
  • Trademarks
  • Signage
  • Ad words
  • Update third-party directories
• Web
  • Domain names
  • Redirects
  • Meta data
  • Site titles
  • Tags
  • Logos
  • Favicons
  • SEO/keywords
• Marketing
  • Brand style guide
  • Media kit
  • Brand asset library
  • Content guidelines
  • Newsletter templates
  • Promotional materials
• Social
  • Handles
  • Profile pics
  • Bios
  • Hashtags
• Distribution plan
  • Brief stakeholders
  • Brief internal team
  • Prepare teasers and public announcements

Some brands may not be ready to flip everything overnight for one reason or another. Even if you have to rebrand in phases, make it very clear what changes are happening when—and what the expectations are going forward. Also, major items, such as signage, website, and other definitive brand assets, should be prioritized.

3)Have Your Style Guide Ready

People will always resist change, so make it as easy as possible for your team to understand and implement your new brand guidelines. A brand style guide is crucial here. Make sure yours is easy to navigate, includes plenty of real-world examples, and is as comprehensive as possible. (Here’s how to assemble a style guide your whole team can use.)

Your team should also know who to contact if they have questions about usage, and make sure the brand style guide lives in an easily accessible place, whether it’s distributed in print or online. Along with the brand style guide, all assets should be easily available, including things like logos, color palettes, fonts, etc.

4)Launch Your Rebrand Internally First

An internal launch can be considered a soft launch. It’s the best way to get everyone on board, work out any kinks, and bring the whole team into the brand story so that they can best represent the brand. A few ways to do that:

• Launch 4-6 weeks before the public launch.
• Explain not just what you’ve done but why you rebranded at all. Talk about the problems you were trying to solve, the strategic thinking behind your creative decisions, etc.
• Consider throwing a special unveiling event.
• Have the creative team walk people through the brand story, from inception to final execution. (A good rebrand is a good story; if you don’t have that, that might be a red flag.)
• Encourage feedback and questions, and designate point people to field these.
• Put the brand in their hands (fun swag, games, quizzes, or brand color-themed parties can generate a lot of excitement).
• Coordinate across departments if you are deploying in multiple offices across the country or world, along with any remote employees.
• Identify where brand style guide and assets live.

Most importantly, make sure everyone knows who they can go to for questions, approvals, etc. going forward.

5)Make Your External Launch an Exciting Event

Once the big day comes, there’s no going back. So make sure your team is ready and confident to unveil the new branding.

1) Prep your press announcements, blogs, marketing newsletters, videos, etc. Note: If you’re an international brand, you might need content translated.

Example: QVC created a demo video showing off their new branding.

2) Create promo assets for every platform (think videos, infographics, Instagram, etc.). Also have assets on hand for easy sharing with press, partners, etc. Make sure everything is high-res and sized correctly.

Example: To announce that they were dropping their name from their logo, Mastercard created this infographic detailing the evolution of their infographic.

3) Know your brand story.How does the new branding reflect the brand’s journey? Why is that interesting to the outside world? You can walk people through the story like Uber (their design team created an in-depth case study) or take a casual approach (like Slack’s new logo announcement).

Example: This super creative Zendesk rebrand video is a brilliant (and on-brand) behind-the-scenes look at their rebrand.

Remember: Your Brand Wasn’t Built Overnight

A rebrand is an exciting endeavor, but it’s not the end of your brand story. Preserving your brand integrity is crucial to help your brand penetrate the consciousness and have true staying power, and that requires diligent work.

Post rebrand, it’s your content that plays a huge role in telling your brand story, so make sure your team is empowered to do it well and consistently. A few tips and resources to help:

• Find out how to build the right content team (even if you’re a small department).
• Learn how to craft a content strategy to help you tell the right stories.
• Optimize your content creation process so you can work more efficiently.
• Work smarter, not harder with these 100+ tools to create quality content.
• Show people who you are by turning your culture into interesting content.
• Think of unique ways to tell your brand story.
• Experiment with different mediums, whether it’s infographics, videos, or interactives.
• Track the right metrics for your buyer’s journey to figure out if what you’re doing is working.

And if you’re struggling to create high-quality content at scale, don’t feel bad about calling in re-enforcements. Try these tips to vet a content agency, and let us know if you ever want to talk shop.

Now updated from 8 to 10 ways to increase your brand awareness, so you’re all set for an even more successful year!

So you want to know how to increase brand awareness? Well, you’re in the right place, especially if you’re working with a limited budget, but need to cut through the noise and stand above your competitors.

Besides traditional advertising, what can you do to help put your brand name on everybody’s lips? We’ve compiled ten ideas to get people talking (plus, there are lots more peer-generated ideas for increasing brand awareness over on events industry forum EventTribe).

1. Take to social media

Sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat and Whatsapp offer companies a great free-of-charge platform to promote themselves, build their brand and their audience.

Finding the time to feed your profiles and blog can be a challenge but if you’re going to do it you need to be active, which means posting and interacting several times a day. But what to say? Expertise in a particular area can make for a large following. Stay relevant and on-topic and you will garner a valuable and engaged audience.

Don’t forget you need to talk to others to grow your following, which means responding to comments on your social media pages in a timely manner and engaging followers in conversation. No time at all? Check out these 10 tools for automating your social media.

According to research carried out by Hootsuite in December, Starbucks is the best performing brand on social media, closely followed by Chanel, Friskies, and Urban Outfitters. So be sure to check out their activity for inspiration. Then read our guide to mastering social media for tips on how to become social champions too.

2. Hold an event

Whatever type of business you’re in, holding a live event is a great way to get the attention of clients and prospects. This could be a purely social summer barbecue or Christmas party or structured around business development such as the launch of a new product or promotion. You could even run a workshop to share your professional expertise.

Holding a live event gives you valuable ‘face time’ with potential customers and offers the opportunity for them to experience the look, feel and personality of your brand. You can always adopt a theme to add interest, such as a 1920s cocktail evening or a vintage tea party. Consider raising funds for charity at your event – it’s the perfect way to give back as you get.

3. Launch a PR campaign

Gaining press coverage is essentially like getting free advertising. But it’s actually better than that because editorial has more credibility and is more likely to convince potential new customers to check you out. The hard part is coming up with a newsworthy angle, and this will depend on whether you’re targeting local or national media, print, TV or radio.

Perhaps you have a great personal story to tell about why you started your business, maybe you’ve launched a unique new product or have identified an interesting sales trend? Conducting surveys in your specialist field and publishing the results can offer a credible line for journalists or why not try a spot of responsive PR, looking out for relevant journalist requests you can respond to?

Another top tip is to search Twitter for opportunities using the following hashtags: #pressrequest or #journorequest.

4. Exhibit yourself

Exhibiting can be a highly effective way to showcase your brand to hundreds of people in your target market. However, it can be expensive, so you’ll need to prepare carefully to ensure you realise the best return on investment. It’s not always a case of ‘build it and they will come’, you need to go further to attract people to your stand – and keep them there long enough to discover your brand and absorb your message.

Organising a competition or giveaway is a great way to attract attention. Who doesn’t like getting something for nothing? Quirky or useful branded gifts such novelty items that can be passed on to the kids, or food and drink, will always be well received. A promotional tote bag is another good idea – turning your recipients into walking billboards. If you’re not sure where to start, check out this advice on how to do brand activation at events.

5. Join forces with another business

There’s power in numbers – if you can identify other businesses targeting the same kind of customer like you, but not directly competing there’s an opportunity to join forces for mutual benefit.

For example if you’re a florist you can offer an exclusive discount for customers of the local bridal shop. For you, it’s a great way to attract new customers. For the established business it’s a way to reward their customers at no expense and with virtually no effort.

6. Sponsor something

Sponsorship of an event or product is another proven way to reach a target audience and increase brand awareness. Sponsoring an event can entitle your company to exclusive face-to-face time with attendees as well as overt branding opportunities.

But choose wisely – what you choose to sponsor should be relevant to your target market and ‘on message’. Be sure to steer clear of any PR disasters – Nestlé’s sponsorship of a health conference in 2014 led to the event being canceled after senior NHS figures urged a boycott over the food and beverage company’s promotion of infant formula in the developing world.

To help you make the right sponsorship choice visit Sponsormonster, a free to use service which matches potential corporate sponsors with sponsorship opportunities that meet their marketing criteria.

7. Organise an experiential stunt

For companies targeting consumers, there’s no better way to raise brand awareness than getting out on the street and engaging with potential customers.

Experiential campaigns can work for both B2B and B2C companies too.

From a pop-up on the street to hiring performance artists, organising a flash mob to engaging people with VR headsets, the only limit is your imagination. And if you’re not sure where to start, why not check out these 23 examples.

8. Invest in promotional merchandise

Small corporate gifts are a great way to thank customers for their business and reinforce your brand at the same time. You can provide branded pens for pennies and it will put your company name and contact details at your customers’ fingertips for months to come.

6 Ways To Refresh Your Brand And Maintain An Identity Authentication

But don’t scrimp too much, cheap and cheerful can be a false economy. There’s no point giving a really cheap pen which is going to run out of ink really quickly – not only will your brand exposure be short-lived, giving low-quality items reflects badly on your company.

The more creative you can be with your gifts the better. Something unusual or personalised will delight the recipient and may lead to them posting about the gift on social media, earning your brand extra glory.

6 Ways To Refresh Your Brand And Maintain An Identity Authentication

9. Tap into the power of video

Video marketing has continued to rise in popularity, with Facebook Live video now reportedly at 8 billion daily views, outstripping even YouTube’s massive 5 billion views per day.

With stats like that, the chances are your target audience is at least occasionally watching videos online, and with social networks competing for video views, they’re giving more prominence to video as a format on their platforms.

This means if you can great video content for your brand, there’s a good chance that a) you’ll have an audience that wants to watch it and b) the social networks will be happier to show it to their users.

10. Try content marketing

The idea of content marketing has been around for a number of years now, but there are still large numbers of businesses who haven’t jumped onto the trend yet. The benefits are numerous, from increasing organic search traffic, to generating more leads, to shortening the sales cycle, to becoming a thought leader in your industry.

If you’re looking to build brand awareness, then blogging regularly could be a tactic that works as well for you as it has for thousands of other businesses who are already actively content marketing.

In conclusion

6 Ways To Refresh Your Brand And Maintain An Identity Essay

These are just 10 ways to build your brand awareness! With a little imagination and an understanding of your customer, the sky (and your budget) is the limit when it comes to getting in front of your target audience this year.