As you consider your goals and plan for 2023 you might be considering a rebrand, if you’ve never done this before it could be quite a daunting prospect.
The answer to the question ‘should you rebrand in 2023’ can only be answered like most things with ‘it depends’. A rebrand is undoubtedly a big undertaking, for some businesses it will just be rolling it out digitally but if you are a retailer or e-commerce brand there could be even more touchppoints like packaging!
In the time I’ve been a designer I have worked for two different companies, both in-house freelance and an agency settings so I have a lot of experience working on brand identity, graphic design, marketing and website design and basically getting to understand what works well for brands.
Do you need a refresh or a complete rebrand?
Sometimes it’s just little things that need tweaking with your brand. You might not be at the stage where you’re ready for a rebrand, but equally you could be. It is about figuring out whether that’s the right thing to do for your business. And if it’s the right timing for you as well. because a rebrand is a big undertaking and there’s just a lot to think about.
You might decide on reflection that your efforts might be better spent at this stage just refining what you’ve got, maybe a little refresh is all that is needed. Maybe you need to work on the appearance of your marketing more or your website. It might not be down to the actual brand identity itself. There’s many different aspects obviously is going into business from the product or service that you’re offering and how that fits within a market to the way that you’re doing your marketing. And then of course your website and whether that’s appealing and working well for you.
I have a free download that I’m going to include below, which will help you with the reflection on your brand. If that’s something that you think would be beneficial for you and it’s completely free. Just sign up with your email and you will be added to my newsletter, but you can unsubscribe at any time. You will also get access to my resource library.
The difference between branding and brand identity
There’s also a point I want to make about how your branding isn’t the same as your brand identity it is often used quite interchangeably, even with people that are designers and they mean that they’re going to mostly do the brand identity, but they say branding. Your branding is everything as a whole, it encompasses everything about your business and it’s the perception that people will have about you about your brand.
Whereas your brand identity is the things like the logo, the colour palette, the fonts, the images that you choose and all of that visual side, it would be icons, illustrations patterns that you use. These are the things that help create brand recognition visually.
Reflection on last year and looking ahead to this year
The first thing to do is reflect on 2022 and also consider your goals ahead for 2023. Now if maybe last year was a big year of change and growth for your business it brought you to the point of feeling like a rebrand was a good next step. Then this is a good time to consider.
Equally, if things maybe didn’t go as well as you hoped you could consider whether your brand identity is a factor in that maybe you’re looking to improve on things. Sometimes you do need to invest in order to uplevel your business and for your brand to be more aligned with the ideal clients that you want.
Design and creativity should be used more than just about making something look pretty or visually appealing, you want it to be solving an actual business problem that you have. That could be a big or small problem such as your customers aren’t connecting or your brand was DIY and it’s not as professional as you want it to look. Or if you have a bigger overall image problem it could be things like if your website isn’t working very well or it isn’t converting.
You don’t just want to make things look pretty. Otherwise, you probably won’t be getting as much of a return on your investment. Now, that’s not to say that you obviously going to get an instant return on investment or that it is all down to the person you work with but you want it to have an impact for your business.
What can a rebrand do for you?
Good and strategic design can help to build a trust and establish your business. You can build customer recognition and it can also help with customer loyalty too. If they feel aligned with your brand then they’re more likely to tell their friends. They will want to continue to purchase from you and be repeat customers or supporters.
You want that loyal fan and they need to feel that the brand is for them. That it speaks their language and how it looks appeals to them.
This is why a huge part of branding and even for brand identity, it’s more of a holistic view you need to think about the strategy. Things like the brands position, messaging, and voice rather than just the visuals to convey something about a brand. For example it’s supposed to be like a fun and playful brand that’s going to come across visually very different to a corporate and serious brand.
The cost of a rebrand
It’s not necessarily a simple, easy, quick and cheap undertaking to rebrand. A huge consideration when it comes to rebranding is the financial investment. And depending on how you look at it you could be considering it as just an expense or an investment. Realistically it depends on the stage of business you’re at. If it is a good timing for you then that’s an investment. Whereas for other people, if it’s the wrong choice, wrong time, it’s going to feel more like an expense.
If you want to work with an experienced designer or you want to be working with an agency or you want to be working with a brand strategist then they’re going to be charging an amount that would convey the value that they are going to bring to you. And it is going to then be reflective of the return on investment because it can add a lot of value to your business.
If the new look helps to bring in more of your right customers or clients and gets you more sales then that’s added a lot of value. If the brand identity is done right, it’s going to last you for many years. It’s not something that you’re going to change up in another year or two unless your business changes and evolves again, and it’s just not the right fit.
The difference between a cheap designer and an expensive designer is probably going to be in their experience. A newer designer whilst being cheaper is likely to maybe I’ve just got started, be less experienced, may be self-taught and getting started. A more experienced designer is likely going to be more expensive.
I will caution to not forget that if you think about a time when you’ve been underpaid or you didn’t charge as much as you should have it’s actually really hard to get into an enthusiastic mindset for what you’re being paid for. Whilst you want to do a good job there’s maybe more of a limit to that. If you’ve been paid well for something you can put more effort in. You can spend more time on it, knowing that you’ve been covered for your work and you’re going to want to do a really good job.
How long will a rebrand take and do you have the time for the project
Another consideration when it comes to whether you should rebrand is the time factor. Now, depending on the design and depending on your project, the timeframe could range from something like VIP day, which is really popular now with designers and I also offer myself.
Or it could be a project that’s going to span over a couple of months, maybe even longer, I’ve certainly seen the projects can go on for months. And sometimes that is on the client side, but some designers processes and agencies for example, are going to be that bit longer and they might be juggling multiple clients too whilst working on yours so it takes longer.
Whilst the designer’s going to be the one doing the actual work it does need a lot of input from from you as well as a client. Ensuring that you are giving feedback to the designer in the right time, or get anything across so that they can do their best work.
Is your business name changing as well
If you are changing your business name there are even more factors to consider like your domain name, social media handles, emails. As well as all of your design that references your name and is in your old branding would be things that you’ll have to change like business cards and marketing.
Just consider what you will need to do. It might also come down to the budget that you have, how much you be paying the designer or other hires to do versus what you’d be doing yourself.
The rebrand process
The first thing of course is trying to find the person that you want to work with whether that is a designer or an agency. You need to know somewhat the scope of the project so that you can brief the designer properly to say what you need doing. Although a lot of this can come out during the discovery process as well.
The person that you’re working with then we’ll likely audit and assess your current branding. Which I think is quite an important step, it’s looking at what might be causing issues and making sure that they are sorted within the new brand. The designer will get to know and discover your brand either through questionnaires, conversations or brand strategy workshops. The next step is researching competitors in industry.
Then they will be creating the creative direction, which is might be a mood board or something called a style scape. Once a creative direction has been signed off, then your designer will be working on logo design concepts. And then we’ll present the strongest one or few to you – most designers will show you between one to three logos.
Depending on the package that you’ve purchased, you might just see logos, but you also might see more of a a brand identity presentation at this stage. This could include things like mock-ups as well so you can really get a sense of how the new brand might look which is quite exciting!
The next step would be any refinements or maybe going back to a different concept. The project will be wrapped up with a brand board / style guide or full brand guidelines which should tell you things like the fonts, colour palettes and any rules.
