Rebranding With the Support of a Creative Agency

So, You’ve Outgrown Your Brand. Here’s How a Content Marketing Agency Can Guide Your Reinvention.

Let’s do a little role-play. Imagine that you own a local lawn care company. When you originally launched your business, you only provided lawn care services to the Johnson County area, which is why you named your company JOCO Lawn Care Pros.

This moniker conveys what services you provide and where you’re based, two hallmarks of an effective name. However, JOCO Lawn Care Pros has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years.

For example, you now provide services to the eight counties surrounding Johnson County. This expansion exponentially increased your customer base, and by extension, your revenue.

To keep up with consumer demand, you also broadened your service offerings. In addition to lawn care, you now provide custom landscaping, pest control, tree trimming and pruning, irrigation systems, and hardscaping features. You’re a bigger, better company, but you’ve outgrown your brand, and your name is no longer relevant.

So, what’s the play here? How do you reinvent yourself to better reflect the company you are today without forfeiting the years of goodwill you’ve established with local communities?

This is the type of situation where rebranding shifts from consideration to a necessity. And the best way to pull this off is by working with a creative agency that knows the ins and outs of brand development.

Rebranding Isn’t Starting Over; It’s a Natural Step In Brand Development

Most companies start small with a limited service offering. As they grow, expand, and mature, their brand must evolve accordingly. For example, Apple was originally named Apple Computers, which makes sense because computers were their primary area of focus for decades.

However, with the advent of the iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV, they dropped the word “Computer” from the name to better reflect their expanded offering of consumer electronics. They also used the rebranding opportunity to emphasize their commitment to creating a superior user experience and incorporating aesthetically elevated designs into their product line-up.

Virtually every PC prior to 2000 was either black, white, or a shade of gray. Apple dared to reinvent the formula, leveraging bold colors and sleeker materials into their designs. The two-word slogan “Think Different” was so simple, and yet so effective at conveying to consumers that a functional and fashionable version of technology had arrived.

Apple Computers wasn’t a mistake or a failed first draft. It was a foundation to support the next phase of the company’s evolution. Rebranding served as the necessary signal to let the world know Apple was building something bigger and broadening its reach in tech.

Signs It’s Time to Contact a Creative Agency About Rebranding

You now know that your company’s brand isn’t evergreen. Times change, as do industries and consumer demands. So, how do you know when it’s time to consider contacting a creative marketing agency about rebranding?

• Your brand identity is outdated. The current look, feel, or messaging no longer reflects the company’s values or direction.
• You need to reposition yourself in the market, either by targeting a new demographic, region, or consumers.
• Your company is either merging or being acquired by another company, meaning a rebrand is necessary to establish one cohesive identity.
• You need a way to shake off negative associations. The weight of controversy, bad press, and poor public perception can eventually become too much. Sometimes, rebranding is the best way to rehab your image.
• You’ve grown or expanded. If your service region and scope of products and services are vastly larger than they originally were, a rebrand can help convey the new you to consumers, similar to what Apple did.
• Competitive pressure. You may have noticed your competitors use similar color palettes, visuals, and messaging. A rebrand can help you stand out in a crowded marketplace.
• New leadership or vision. A rebrand is an excellent way to showcase how your company is reinventing itself.
• Legal reasons. Rebranding can alleviate any trademark or naming issues your company has encountered.

How a Creative Agency Guides Your Rebranding

Your brand isn’t your logo, your services, or your mission statement. Your brand is the impression people have about your company. It’s an unvarnished gut feeling, and when this feeling is favorable, it fosters consumer loyalty and defines your unique value.

To facilitate a smooth transition in brand development, we break the process down into three steps:

Assessment and Discovery

Before we can figure out where we’re going, we must first define where your brand currently stands. Our assessment and discovery process analyzes your existing brand. To clearly define your DNA, we learn who your target audience is and perform an extensive competitor analysis. We also adopt your industry’s language and learn about core trust signals; this helps us learn which specific things to avoid or incorporate as we differentiate you from your competitors in a compelling way.

Core Development

This is where the new you takes shape. Using what we’ve learned during the assessment and discovery process, we conceptualize the main written components of your company’s evolution, including:

• Brand strategy.
• Brand personality.
• Verbal identity.
• Brand messaging.
• Brand story.
• Brand name and tagline.

Visual Identity

Lastly, we leverage our creative resources to develop your new visual identity. This is arguably the most important step, as the majority of people don’t think of text or taglines when they think of your company. They think of colors, images, and other visual elements.

Our creative agency’s services cover logo redesign, developing a brand style guide, and creating branded materials and assets you can use in your marketing. We will also oversee the launch of your redesigned website and help get the word out by socializing the brand on the channels your target audience frequents the most.

We also seasonally revisit the brand to gauge performance and how your brand’s development is progressing. This ongoing support can also help identify potential issues that can affect your brand, such as changes in consumer behavior or aggressive competitor tactics that threaten your market share.

Ready to Take the Next Step? Let’s Talk!

Brand development is both an art and a science. By partnering with a creative agency like iFOCUS, you gain all the benefits of our vast experience and our team of strategists and creatives, including graphic designers, content marketers, and web developers.

Rebranding only feels like a massive undertaking until you have a team of professionals helping you every step of the way. By surrounding yourself with experienced marketers who know the pitfalls and best practices of brand development, you can engage the process with confidence.

Ready to kick off your company’s reinvention? Start a conversation with iFOCUS to learn more about how we can support the evolution of your organization.