Here’s What You Need To Know Before You Rebrand Your Business

Some entrepreneurs seem to be huddling when rebranding their business, but it shouldn’t be the case. After all, rebranding takes lots and lots of effort and planning to do and not all businesses are able to launch their rebranding successfully. Whether it’s because the business cannot adapt to the fast-paced market evolution nowadays or because your competitors are extremely biting off your market share, then rebranding might probably save your business.

Take into a classic example of bad rebranding, Tropicana. Back in 2009, Tropicana, famous for its fruit juice worldwide, tried to revamp their juice’s carton packaging from the classic “straw in an orange” visual on their carton to a more contemporary packaging design with a cap that resembles an orange. Apart from the redesigned packaging, they also invested 70 million dollars for the redesign’s ad campaign. A few weeks later, they changed back to their old packaging design.

Just by simply giving their old packaging a modern look, Tropicana’s sales dropped by 20% after the first two weeks of their redesign’s campaign launch, lost $30 million dollars and competitors took advantage of the “Tropicana crisis”.

Meanwhile, a good example of rebranding would be Twix. Originally named Raider and only sold within mainland Europe, decided to change its name to Twix when Mars. Inc decided to go launch Twix internationally. Knowing that Raider wasn’t a brilliant name for a global confectionery product to be called, they used their product’s physical attribution to create the name “Twix”, which is derived from the word “twin” and “sticks”, which refers to the twin biscuit sticks.

That is how life-changing a rebranding can be. It either makes or breaks your business. Hopefully, our comprehensive guide to branding will help you determine whether it’s time to revamp your business image.

When Should You Consider Rebranding?

On average, it takes about 7-10 years before a company rebrands its business. But due to the competitive landscape across all industries, having a business that cannot cope up with the consumer and market demand tends to be left behind.

Here are different factors to consider when it’s time to give your brand a fresher identity.

When your business is ready to go global.

Expanding your business on a global scale have risks and rewards, respectively. Aside from boosting your brand’s image and sales, it also helps protect your business throughout a domestic economy’s successes and challenges. These questions might be able to help you answer if you can consider rebranding for global expansion:

• Is your business economically and financially stable?
• Do you have existing international customers or do you have an international community base requesting to have your products/services available in other parts of the world?
• What markets will be easy for you to penetrate?
• Do you think your company can leverage international partnerships?
• Have you looked at legal matters regarding pricing, tax, trademarks, licenses, and copyright?

You need to reposition your brand.

Brand repositioning helps you entice new audiences and create a better appeal to the existing ones. However, the aftermath of brand repositioning can either be life-changing or damaging. That’s why companies must be careful when repositioning themselves without compromising their brand equity too much. Don’t know where to start? Find out by reading this helpful article here.

You have very outdated visual branding.

Today’s visually-driven content marketing changes drastically –today, you might be in and the next thing you know, you’re out. That’s why companies must invest in creating a strong, visual-driven brand that captivates their market and is flexible enough to adapt to the changing trends.

You’ve had quite some bad reputation.

With the lightning effects of bad consumer reviews ranting about slow chat responses, malfunctioning products, and mediocre services, businesses are prone to die out easily if they have a bad reputation. Every company needs to take careful measures when it comes to representing themselves online. Rebranding can help businesses by letting consumers change the way they perceive your brand.

You need to improve your brand equity.

Here are four stages that help establish strong brand equity:

1. Who are you? This is your brand’s identity and how your audience will recognize you. You must be able to have a deeper understanding of how your consumers’ mind works.
2. What are you? How will you be able to communicate what your brand stands for? Your product/service’s reliability depends on how you visually and psychologically portray it.
3. What about you? How will your customers be able to perceive your brand based on subjectivity? This is where the strength of supporting your company’s core values with consistent brand-to-consumer communication comes in.
4. What about you and me? What kind of connection did you create with your customers? This stage is the most challenging part — do your consumers recall your brand correctly and associate it with their daily routine? The connection you’ve made with your customers must create an impact that will make a company the top-of-mind choice.

You look too similar to another brand.

Aside from looking inauthentic and sketchy, having similarities in visual attributes of another brand can get you in serious legal issues. Several brands have their logos and even specific color swatches trademarked so other brands who attempt to use them for their own companies can be sued.

Take, for example, Paypal and music streaming service Pandora’s 2017 lawsuit because Pandora allegedly mimicked Paypal’s trademarked logo. Because of that, Pandora had to pay unspecified damages to Paypal. In 2018, without official announcements of rebranding, Pandora tweaked their logo.

You have to deal with acquired and developed lines of products.

It’s important to consider how merger and acquisition projects affect your branding before you go through for it.

According to Harvard Business Review, 70%-90% of mergers and acquisitions lead to failure. Such a case is what happened to Amazon and Whole Foods’ merging fiasco. When these two retail giants merged, one of their problems were several complaints they received from Whole Foods employees because of different work culture. Why? Because Amazon is known as fast and efficient while Whole Foods Co. is known for its customised, reassuring touch. Things ended sourly for them.