10 Types of rebranding strategies

4. Revise your brand slogan

A good slogan is catchy and includes your company’s mission and vision. This slogan includes the purpose of the company compactly. Changing the slogan is easier than changing the name. But like changing the name, you still have to be very careful.

5. Rebuild your brand identity

When you start rebranding, the tangible elements you use for your brand may have been in use for several years. This means you have plenty of time to discover their strengths and weaknesses before replacing them. You may want to redesign your logo, use new colors in your brand, or even create new guidelines for your brand. Here are some common changes you can use as part of your rebranding strategy:

• Logo

Maybe you loved your logo when you first started your company, but your customers may not understand it. Your logo may also need to be updated to reflect other big changes you’ve made within the company.

• Choose a new color palette

Colors have a huge impact on your brand some colors are now synonymous with the brands that use them, like McDonald‘s yellow. But choosing the right color can be difficult, and you may need to update colors as your company grows.

• Typography

As with color, your original font may be different than you imagined. When re-evaluating fonts, pay close attention to the strengths and weaknesses of old fonts – like evaluating fonts for web design or PowerPoint.

• Browsing shapes and images

Like logo, color palette, and topography, images and shapes also play a vital role in your brand identity. If you intend to change other visual elements of the brand, it is better to review the images and shapes as well so that everything is coherent in the rebranding process.

Rebranding strategies

If you’re going to go to great lengths to create a new brand identity for your business, you better make sure you do it right. Having (and using) brand guides will help you keep your brand consistent after a change.

1. Start with a business reason

Any rebranding strategy should begin with a deep understanding of the business rationale for rebranding. Is it because of accelerating business growth? Should the company compete with larger, more established competitors?

Some of these business reasons are easy to implement, such as a merger of two companies, and others are more subtle, such as a larger corporate image. If you don’t understand the business reasons for these efforts, you could be wasting huge amounts of resources. Some other top reasons to rebrand your professional services firm include:

You have to compete at a higher level or in a new market.

Your brand no longer reflects your identity.

Your company has given away a new brand.

You have a legitimate reason to change.

You need to simplify and focus on your message.

You have a new marketing team.

You’ve launched a new service line.

2. Research your target customers and company

Once you understand the business reason for rebranding, the next step is to conduct independent research on the target customers and the company. If you are trying to enter a new market, this research should also include new target customers. The goal is to gain an objective understanding of current brand perception and competitors.

Without this research, you are only operating from an internal perspective. Our research on buyers and sellers of professional services shows that all companies have blind spots and distort the market’s view of themselves. In general, we are all human. Without objective research, you will build your brand based on false assumptions.

3. Use positioning and messaging to achieve your brand strategy

As you develop your company’s market positioning and messaging architecture, you reveal the essence of your brand strategy. Market positioning provides a brief description of where you fit in the market space. Are you an innovative leader or a low-cost supplier?

This positioning will affect your next decisions. But it’s not enough to just make something. It should strike a balance between you as your company and who you want to become.

You must be able to support your positioning, otherwise, your brand will be hollow. Your messaging architecture shapes your messages to each of your primary audiences. These messages should be consistent with the overall brand and be supportable.

It is not a marketing copy, but a skeleton on which the marketing copy is built.

4. Build your brand identity

This is part of the rebranding strategy where you develop the visual elements that represent your brand, such as your company name, logo, slogan, colors, business card design, location, etc. These elements are often described in the brand’s style guide document. This document provides a set of parameters to ensure that your brand performs consistently throughout all stages of your marketing and digital marketing strategy.

Many people confuse these elements with your brand. Your brand is your reputation and visibility, not your company name or logo. Your brand identity is a visual shorthand for your brand.

5. Create your website and online presence

Your website is the most important communication tool for business development. A website is a place where you can tell a compelling story to any audience. A website is the first place a prospective customer or employee goes to find out about your company.
It is no exaggeration to say that a website and online presence are the heart of a modern professional services firm.

All rebranding strategies ultimately involve a website. The website is built based on your messaging architecture framework. A website along with your online presence (eg social media) will fully represent your position.

6. Guarantee marketing

At this point in your rebranding strategy, you should develop all the marketing components you need to convey your brand and service messages, such as slide presentations, proposal templates, brochures, one-sheet flyers, and trade show booths. These tools are used to convey your message. They should be well supported in your brand strategy.

7. Brand building plan

The final element of a rebranding strategy is developing a plan to promote and strengthen your new brand.

How do you run it internally?

In professional services, your employees must embrace the new brand. Generally, they are your product. It is also important to create a brand that matches your company’s reputation and expertise, as well as its name. The brand should also represent your company’s position. Branding for professional services is difficult.

Some rebranding strategies fail because they try to shortcut the rebranding process. All other strategies fail because they choose the wrong partners to work with.

But it should not be like this. Start with the right rebranding strategy. Find an experienced partner. Pay enough attention to rebranding to reap the rewards. A well-positioned company that displays its brand will be a strong competitor.

Successful examples of rebranding

1. Rebrand Chobani

In 2017, Chobani made big changes in its brand and tried to become the leader of the dairy industry.

Initially, they changed their company identity from a yogurt company to a “food-centric health company” – “fighting to achieve endless happiness“. Below the work page on their website you will find this statement: “The most important thing we do is to make a difference. Our goal has always been more than ourselves. Their focus on health and nutrition can be seen in their advertising and new products, including low-sugar Greek yogurt and Chobani Flip Yogurt.

Chobani also changed their packaging as shown above – instead of using plain white cups with pictures of fruit, they redesigned their product packaging using 19th-century American folk art with a variety of colors. Their rebranding may help them stand out from the rest of the products with plain white packaging on store shelves.

2. Candidate rebrand

After merging two companies, rebranding is often a good decision.
For example, the Foundation Center was the largest source of information on philanthropy, and GuideStar was the largest source of information on US NGOs.

In 2019, these two organizations merged and formed the Candid organization. This enabled the two organizations to serve millions of people and make the world a more beautiful place.

If you visit the Foundation Center website, you will see the following message:

Foundation Center and GuideStar have now become candidates. You have been redirected from candid.org to foundationcenter.org”. The old GuideStar website is still visible and usable, but a new corporate identity has been developed and a link to the candidate page is visible.

Candidate (the newly merged foundation) now has a distinctive website with a mission statement, guiding principles, and a vision that adopts the best tips from Foundation Center and GuideStar.

3. Dropbox rebrand

In 2007 Dropbox launched as a web service for file storage and file sharing – but in 2017 the company aspired to be seen as “the connecting point between teams and businesses everywhere“. Rather than just a file-sharing service, Dropbox now has a variety of APIs, tools, and integrations.

In addition to changing its internal mission, Dropbox has also changed its logo to showcase its new products. In a statement about the new logo, Dropbox’s design team said: “Our old logo was a blue box that said ‘Dropbox is a great place to store stuff.’ The new logo is clearer and simpler, and we know that Dropbox is an open platform and a place for innovation.”

4. Rebrand of pet food specialists

Pet Food Specialists has a timeline on its website that shows all the company’s changes since 1936 when the company first opened. One of the highlights of the website was the company’s name change from Rumford Pet Center to Pet Food Specialists and a logo redesign in 2008. The 80-year-old company has grown significantly in recent years and is now a major coast-to-coast distributor of pet products.

To show its changes and growth in the past years, this company has gone through many successful steps to constantly update its brand and display the products and values ​​that have changed over the past years.

5. Dunkin Donut rebrand

Founded in January 2019, Dunkin’ Donuts was first introduced in 1973 and adopted a new logo that removed the word “Donut” — now icons, logos, and marketing materials use only the word “Dunkin’.”

The new name reflects the company’s focus on coffee – “By simplifying and modernizing our company name, while still paying homage to our heritage, we had the opportunity to create a great energy for Dunkin’,” said Tony Weisman, Dunkin’s U.S. marketing director. to provide, both inside the stores and outside”.

Despite the name change, Dunkin’ continues to use blue and pink colors and iconic font to ensure long-time customers still recognize the brand.

6. IHOP rebrand

As you know, rebranding is a fantastic opportunity to update public perception and attract consumer attention. For this reason, IHOP has used rebranding as a marketing measure to draw people’s attention to its new product – hamburgers. In 2018, IHOP announced plans to change its brand to IHOb (International House of Hamburgers). The company began using the IHOb brand on social media, its website, and in-store advertising.

IHOP eventually admitted that the rebranding was a prank to draw attention to the new line of beef burgers. Their rebranding joke was a clever play — it made people fight over IHOP’s most important product (pancakes) while also paying attention to other offerings.

IHOP has since reverted to its original name and logo.

7.PNG AIR Rebrand

Strength: their focus on cultural identity

PNG AIR is an airline based in Papua New Guinea. Their comprehensive rebranding included a name change (from Airlines PNG to PNG AIR), positioning, and a major change in visual identity. The goal was to transform the company from a price-oriented airline to a powerful brand with a strong identity. To do this Principals created a visual base of important cultural icons including history, country, and brand promise to save its people.

8. Jumbo rebrand

Strength: their future-oriented thinking

A good rebranding is flexible enough to grow with the brand, albeit slowly. For Jumbo (an online lottery ticket retailer in Australia), the company’s ambitious plans for global expansion required a rebrand to take the brand to the next level. The brand’s idea of “Imagine More” became an anchor for the rebranding, and its elephant symbol, Joe, embodies the idea of “Big“: “Big excitement, big dreams, big rewards and, of course, big promise.”

9. Tupperware rebrand

Strengths: A modern take on a classic brand

Tupperware often uses images of mothers from the 1970s. The brand declares that image is an important part of its heritage – and its larger mission. They try to support women who sell their products all over the world. Therefore, “Trust means yourself” became their rebranding slogan. Their visual image included vibrant colors, personified images, and a cleaner aesthetic to bring the brand back into the modern age.

10. Siemens rebrand

Strengths: Their energetic regeneration

For a 170-year-old brand, maintaining relevance has always been a challenge. For Siemens (engineering and technology company brand), which has always dedicated itself to innovation to improve the quality of life, it was time to double down on its brand promise. Therefore, their rebranding was based on a hypothesis: a genius for life. This new identity initially speaks to people with a dynamic, energetic, and clear visual language that is both flexible and adaptable.