BOLD INSIGHTS
What do you do when your brand no longer feels accurate? You look at your website, your social media or marketing materials and something feels disconnected. Your communication just doesn’t resonate with your audience and your brand doesn’t seem to speak to your brand’s current or future values.This happens to a lot of companies and how you navigate is very crucial. Do you do a refresh of your brand or do you rebrand. Let’s have a look at how to go about it.
The Brand Refresh
A refresh is an update to your brand’s visuals to align them with ever changing markets or to steer your brand to a more modernised look. Think of it as more like renovating a house. You are not tearing down the foundation of the house or completely moving out but you are painting the walls, replacing furniture.
You are not radically altering the core of your brand but rather polishing up on your brand’s visuals and assets.You could update your website’s visuals, slightly tweaking your logo or adding complimentary colors to your design system.
You can opt for a brand refresh when you already have a strong brand system but want to modernise your brand but don’t want to alienate or break the trust the audience has built with your brand.
The Rebrand
A rebrand on the other hand is a total overhaul of your brand from the ground up. This can be informed by various factors but commonly it’s triggered by a company’s core values or motivations. Sometimes it is needed to shift the brand to a completely new demographic or target audience.
All this requires you to do extensive research and gather crucial insights into what the rebrand is and what it’s supposed to achieve.You can conduct stakeholder interviews and have strategic planning sessions to ensure the new direction is accurately captured and future proof.Companies evolve and adapt over time and a strong fully aligned visual and strategic direction is key to help steer into the right direction.
When we got the brief from reel informatics about doing a rebrand, we had to first do a strategy session to get the motivation behind the rebrand and so that we could be faithful to the brand. You can read up on our approach to doing a rebrand for reel informatics here
The Cost and Time Implications
The final deciding factor for many companies comes down to resources because the scope of a brand refresh and a rebrand vary greatly.
For a brand refresh it is generally a faster process and can take 4 to 8 weeks depending on the company size. Since you are not overhauling the brand’s strategy the team can make visual updates much faster. It is also cost effective to do a brand refresh since your focus is mostly on the assets that are getting the visual refresh.
For a rebrand it is a long term strategy and can sometimes not be fully realised till years later, but typically you can plan to start rolling out the rebrand from 3 to 6 months. All this will take into account the strategy sessions, market research, making the visual changes and testing them out. In terms of cost the financial investment will be heavier. This is to cater for all the moving parts and cater for things like trademarking for your logo marketing campaigns and replacing existing collaterals. The cost is higher for a rebrand but the benefits can be seen years later since you laid out the ground works from the start.
Which One Should You Go For
If your business model has changed, your audience has shifted or your current brand is holding you back it’s time to consider a rebrand. However if your missions and strategy are still the same you may be better served with a refresh for your brand to stay updated with the current modern markets.
Ready to evaluate your brand and see if you need a refresh or a full rebrand?
