For an organisation of any size, rebranding is a massive step.
Regardless of your reasons for the rebrand (an attempt to reflect recent growth, a move into new markets, or simply addressing shortcomings in your current branding)...you really need to get it right. No pressure!
Done without the right amount of care and expertise, overhauling your branding can cause confusion and backlash.
So, how do you rebrand without losing your audience? In today’s blog, we’ll break down the importance of understanding your current brand identity, keeping your audience in the loop, listening to feedback once you’ve launched and more.
Understand your current brand identity
You can’t effectively overhaul your current branding if you don’t understand your current branding. Your brand identity is about more than just your logo or your colour palette. It’s about how your customers, and potential customers, perceive your organisation.
Before you make any significant steps in your rebranding journey, make sure you fully understand the foundations on which your current branding was built. If there were never really any foundations to begin with, then… yes, you could probably do with a rebrand.
Seek feedback before you launch your rebrand
Testing early concepts of your rebrand with current loyal customers could save you from a backlash later on. It’s not really possible to anticipate every potential form of pushback, but seeking the opinion of even a fraction of your audience should give you a general idea of the aspects of your rebrand that might (key word ‘might’) be received less than favourably.
Don’t rush your rebrand
It’s important that all aspects of your rebrand are ready to launch at the same time, even if the actual launch is staggered. For example, if you have a new logo, it might be tempting to replace your old logo as soon as the new one is ready but if every other aspect of the rebrand is still weeks or months away, the resulting inconsistency in your branding could end up confusing your audience. This could ultimately overshadow the logo launch, regardless of how popular the design actually is.
A real-life example would be Twitter rebranding to X. Obviously this was one of the most controversial rebrands in history regardless of the way you look at it, but one of the most jarring aspects was that the ‘twitter.com’ URL wasn’t retired until almost an entire year after the rebrand.
That probably wasn’t the biggest problem with the rebrand, in fairness, considering most people are still calling it Twitter.
Keep your audience in the loop
Don’t surprise your audience with a rebrand that’s completely out of the blue. It’s all well and good wanting to make a big splash with the launch of your new branding, but you should at the very least be hinting at these changes in the weeks leading up to them.
Keep seeking feedback after the rebrand
It’s natural for rebrands to have teething problems, especially at launch. In fact it tends to be quite rare that an audience will be unanimously on board with a branding overhaul (few people like change!).
But while some pushback is to be expected, that doesn’t mean you should ignore specific criticisms and pass them all off as purely reactionary. If there’s a significant outpouring of negative feedback, it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to change course but, at the very least, you should listen to that feedback and let your audience know that you’re listening.
Conclusion: How to rebrand without losing your audience
Rebranding is as much about communication as it is about creativity. You’re not just changing how your organisation looks; you’re also changing how you want your organisation to be perceived on a fundamental level.
The key? Keep your audience involved and fully in the loop. Because while you’re likely rebranding to appeal to new customers, you don’t have to alienate your current customers in the process.
