Is It Time To Rebrand?

SHAPE

What We’ll Cover

Auditing Your Brand

Positioning That Resonates

Maintaining Brand Integrity

01

02

03

04

What We’ll Cover

01

Your brand is most likely the number one driver behind your business operations, successes, and failures; which is why it’s of the

utmost importance to ensure your brand is aligned with your business and marketing strategies. Here’s the thing—businesses

aren’t static. We get it. As your business has changed, it’s likely your brand has needed to evolve as well. If your logo looks like it was designed in Microsoft Paint and you have a decade-old website

that’s in flash, you’re probably cued up for some strategic rebranding.

Taking time to conduct some primary research with your target markets will provide your brand with some guiding

points—we pinky promise.

Crissy Saint, Sr. Communications Strategist

Auditing Your Brand

02

You’re probably a pro at doing what you do best—from handling the ins and outs of the daily grind to putting out fires as they arise (and they always do). By conducting a brand audit, you’re able to check

the pulse on your brand to discover areas of improvement andopportunities for momentous growth. Bringing in external, objective

brand strategists can help your team gain internal consensus to move ahead.

Ever told a white lie in front of your boss because you weren’t sure how they’d take it? Conducting anonymous interviews and surveys can help the internal stakeholders of an organization speak with candor about the various challenges and opportunities they feel exist. By gathering and reviewing this type of insight, everyone can come to-gether and gain consensus on how best to move the brand forward. Taking time to conduct some primary research with your target markets will provide your brand with some guiding points—we pinky promise. Go straight to the source (your consumers) and they’ll tell you what’s not working and what is. Whether it’s your messaging or your pricing mod-el, your target audience will practically spell out for you where you’re hitting the mark and where you’re dropping the ball. Where you’re going is (in-part) shaped by where you’ve been, especially as a brand out and about in the public eye. A brand workshop where you review past iterations of your brand, your brand assets, and your strategy can be extremely telling. What was the original vision of the brand—and how has that evolved over time? Hindsight is 20/20.

GET THE INSIDE SCOOP

MARKET RESEARCH ALWAYS HELPS

TAKE A GLANCE BACKWARDS

Positioning That Resonates

03

As Drake rapped, “[we] started from the bottom, now we’re here.” It’s likely that when your brand took its first steps that the context in which it was born made perfect sense. Over time the landscape tends to change, which could leave you high and dry with brand positioning that doesn’t quite make sense anymore. That market research we talked about during the brand audit phase? That’s where this comes into play. Take a look at your competitors and map out a sweet spot for your brand that allows you speak your

tribe’s lingo while differentiating yourself from the crowd.

By analyzing your brand’s following, you’re able to segment your audience based on certain criteria that will help you form personas of your primary target audience type. These personas, or consumer profiles, can help you define how to best position your brand so it’s consistently relevant to those you’re targeting.

Sponge up everything you can possibly uncover about your competitors. What are they doing that’s next level? How are they interacting with their audiences? What is the look-and-feel they’re building brand equity with? Which platforms do they market on? What are their differentiators? Knowing the players will help you win the game.

Remember that time when you got caught doing something you weren’t supposed to and your mom wasn’t even in the same room? How was that possible? Consumers, much like your parentals, have a sixth sense about when something’s amiss. Your brand should be positioned on that which is tried and true for your culture, your vision, and your values. No one ever supports a poser. Lesson? Be yourself.

WHO IS MY TARGET AUDIENCE

WHAT ARE MY COMPETITORSUP TO?

IS MY BRAND BEING AUTHENTIC?

Maintaining BrandIntergrety

04

A few years back, Steve McKee published “When Growth Stalls” in which he states that of nearly 5,700 companies that he

studied—41.2% of them had stalled in the previous decade. Why? Brands (and their humans) came across a challenge and

didn’t adapt. That makes sense in a way because change can be scary—but it doesn’t have to be.

Think five steps ahead and start to map out how your brand refresh will make it’s way into the public sphere. A Project Manager can be super handy in times like these and can help identify certain times in your industry that might be more conducive to and/or hinder the release of your evolved brand. Take that into account and plan accordingly.

If you’re a larger organization that’s been around for a handful of decades—it’s likely your current brand is smattered about all over the place. In fact, we can almost bet that there are pieces of marketing collateral circulating that you forgot even existed. Appoint someone (or various people) the task of putting together a Brand Asset List that will help you identify all the materials that will need to be swapped out with the newly-branded materials come go time.

Once you’ve figured out why your brand has been successful thus far—take note of the reasons why and don’t try to change just for the sake of change. The main goal here is forward progress, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t aspects of your brand that your audience isn’t absolutely in love with. There’s nothing worse than rolling out an evolved brand that leaves your partners, clients, and consumers heading for the hills.

PLAN YOUR NEW BRAND ROLL OUT

TAKE INVENTORY

DON’T TRY AND FIX WHAT ISN’T BROKEN

Connect With MM Brand Agency For Additional Insight On The Market

Research Process

MMBRANDAGENCY.COM HELLO@MMBRANDAGENCY.COM TEL 917 626 8270

Phoenix | Los Angeles | New York