It’s a new year and you’re thinking your company might be up for a rebrand, but should you? There are countless reasons why a company could rebrand, but it’s important to make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons — and doing it properly.
If you’re on the fence about making the big change, take a look at some reasons why you might opt to rebrand. There are plenty of reasons for rebranding, so if one or more of these reasons describes your company’s identity, then it’s probably time for a rebrand.
Reasons to Rebrand
1. Your brand is outdated.
This is one of the most common reasons companies rebrand. After a while, sometimes fonts and colors just look old. If you have a well-established brand, it’s best to do some audience research before nixing the old brand completely. This was the case with our client Imagine! Their brand is highly recognized by their community and just needed some simple modifications to keep with the times.
Before: Their brand was feeling dated with the arched tagline and muted color.
After: We modernized and tightened up the logo by removing the arch, reworked the tagline and brightened the colors. Once the creative work was complete, we worked closely with the Imagine! team to put together a brand guidelines document to help them unify their brand so their team could maintain brand consistency moving forward.
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2. You’ve updated your name.
Sometimes a company just needs to simplify. Doing a name change that makes your company name simpler and easier to remember can really help. For instance, our company used to be called Metzger Albee Public Relations — what a mouthful! Comprise is much shorter. We rebranded to Compriseagency in 2017 with a simpler logo, website URL, email addresses and, let’s face it, our shorter name was easier to talk about at in-person events (remember those?). This is the case for lots of companies with long names. When you adjust your name to make it simpler and more memorable, that is the perfect time to rebrand. Take our client SPAN (Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence) as an example.
Before: The brand mark and coloring were a bit dated and did not fit well within certain spaces.
After: Since the Boulder Safehouse refers to themselves as “SPAN,” we helped them rebrand their logo to not only include the name SPAN but also to modernize the logo so that the updated colors and icon would fit nicely upon all marketing materials.
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3. Your logo doesn’t match your brand personality.
Sometimes companies will start off with a logo design that they created in Canva or the neighbor kid developed for them in a high school design class. We understand. When you’re getting a startup off the ground, you save money where you can. However, over time, that logo doesn’t grow and evolve with you and suddenly it no longer matches the overall brand of the company. That disconnect can turn future customers off. This was the case for New Iridium.
Before: New Iridium’s logo was not up to the professional level that they were looking for. While their previous logo was meant to show the molecular structure of Iridium, as they evolved, the visual was no longer fitting the sophisticated, authoritative tone of the company.
After: Working closely with the New Iridium team, we cleaned up the logo, keeping with the hexagonal and molecular look and feel. Red is a color that both evokes an emotional response and has numerous symbolic meanings, including luck, through different cultures. Consequently, the color red remained and essential element of the rebranded color scheme, which combined the pop of red with a clean, sterile coloring to match the medical field in which New Iridium operates.
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4. You’re dealing with negative press.
There are many companies that just want to put a turbulent history behind them by rebranding with a new name and look. If this is the case, we recommend the company look at where they’re going and their values and rebrand from there. Recently, the Washington Football Team announced its new name and brand: Washington Commanders. This put an end to a 90-year history using a derogatory term as Washington’s mascot, and now they are looking forward with a fresh, new brand.
5. Your services and offerings have evolved.
Many brands have outgrown their name because they’ve added more offerings to their suite of services. In these scenarios, a company’s name might be too specific to one product line, leaving its other products in the lurch. If you are finding your business in this situation, it might be time to rebrand. Think about all your offerings and create a brand that is modern, flexible and quite possibly future-proof.
Rebranding: Difficult but Rewarding
If your company falls into any of these categories, a rebrand is probably the right strategy for you, but take care in your approach. Communicate with your team, think through why a rebrand should be considered and do your research. You want to make sure that rebrand won’t hurt your business in the long run.We are happy to help! Connect with our design team about a potential rebrand today.
