Tags – How to Refresh a Brand
If you’re feeling like your brand is starting to feel a little stale, or you just want to give it a fresh new look, the good news is: you don’t have to start from scratch!
Before we jump into how, just remember that brands are organic – it takes time to develop one worthy of your business, so it’s not always a good idea to rebuild from the ground up.
But as colours, fonts, styles and voices evolve, brands also decay, and often a quick jazz up will help you avoid alienating your current audience.
In other words, a brand refresh requires a new logo and other design elements, while at the same time retaining your central theme; a refresh assures your audience that you’re modern and connected, but it also lets them know that you keep up to date with your field.
Luckily for you, a brand refresh need not be complicated or expensive, you can spruce up your look with just a few simple steps.
Without further ado, here’s how to successfully kickstart a brand refresh:
Step One: Complete a Brand Audit
It’s time to take a good, hard look at your brand’s strengths and weaknesses; this is the “discovery” phase of your brand refresh journey.
Essentially, a brand audit helps you to identify and address problematic areas.
For instance, maybe your brand is starting to lose relevance, or your customers may not be as connected as they once were.
To get started, bring your team together and mind-map, thinking about:
- Your Main Competitors: have they evolved at all?
- Points of Misalignment: are you making any promises that do not align with your brand?
- Your Website: what are you using your website for and how does it look visually?
- The Pros and Cons of your Brand’s Image: referencing your website and other marketing assets
- Current and Future Trends within your industry
As you are thinking about these different areas, remember to keep your brand refresh strategy at the front of your mind, taking into consideration your visual elements and messaging in regards to your brand’s tone and look.
Step Two: Research
Once you’ve figured out the “what” aspect of your brand refresh plan to focus on, the next step is to figure out “how” you’ll achieve them.
Take some time to think about what actions you’ll need to take as a result of your objectives x, y, and z.
Consider how you might use specific tools and services that will aid you in achieving your goals.
Some questions to ask are:
- What does your team, designers and customers like and dislike about the current brand?
- Are there any potential problems you may face with implementing elements of your brand refresh?
- What are your brand values?
- What is your brand’s personality?
- What can you learn from the brands you like or dislike?
- What do you want your brand refresh to achieve?
During this time, you should also conduct some research on your competitors. What are they doing differently and more significantly, what can you do to set yourself apart from the competition?
During your research, you may find it beneficial to go back to step one. Your competitive analysis might cause you to reconsider your existing key messages, digital and social presence, content marketing, logo, and other elements.
Step Three: Make Some Design Changes
A distinctive visual appearance is critical to your brand’s long-term success. Consider the following questions in this order to reveal the genuine nature of your brand:
- Your Logo
- Styles
- Fonts
- Textures
- Colour Palette
As you start to think about how you want to look visually, it’s important to create a design that aligns with the ideas and values of your brand.
Moreover, use the research to help guide you to decide on the overall scope of your rebrand.
For instance:
- How long do you want to spend on your brand refresh?
- How much money do you want to spend?
- Do you only want to focus on your website?
- Do you need to redesign any other marketing assets?
Then, take each element of your brand (e.g. logo, each colour, fonts, style, page templates etc.) and ask yourself:
What story does it tell?
- Is it communicating your values?
- Is it liked?
- Can you use them everyday?
- Is it working?
- Can it be better?
- Is it inspiring for both you and your customers?
Step Four: Plan Your Roll Out
Once you get to this stage, you should have figured out what pieces of your brand you want to change. Now, it’s time to take action!
To roll out, you’ll need to:
- Create updated brand guidelines that explains how the newly refreshed brand works
- Keep everyone in the business in the loop, supplying them with assets
- Update all templates, such as PowerPoint presentations
- Redesign all major assets, such as main website pages, upcoming marketing materials etc.
Wrapping Up
With a brand refresh, you might end up changing a lot of things or maybe just tweak just a few.
One thing’s for sure, a little bit of TLC can bring your business’ identity up to scratch, reignite your passion for your brand and renew your customers’ interest in buying from you.
And luckily, with these steps above, you can transform your brand without overhauling your existing design.
Want to know more? Get in touch today.
In the meantime, take a look at our graphic design services here.
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