Has your brand lost its freshness?

By Lynn Manternach / Guest Editorial

You’ve been working hard to make sure your business is evolving and growing, but are you making sure your brand is keeping up with the changes? If not, it may be time for a brand refresh.

When you think about a brand refresh, it’s easy to focus on the visual and graphical elements of a brand. But your brand is much more than a logo or the signature colors in your marketing materials. Your brand is your reputation. It’s what you are to the marketplace and the value you bring to your customers.

A brand refresh is purposeful fine-tuning to make sure your brand is ready to thrive in a constantly changing marketplace. A brand refresh is an evolution of your existing brand. It’s not a rebrand, which is a much more extensive process.

Refreshing your brand is essentially a two-phase process: First, you must define or redefine who you are, and second, you must communicate the refreshed brand through all channels and interactions. It sounds deceptively simple, doesn’t it?

Any brand adjustment is a big deal, and a refresh should be treated as such. Here are some guidelines to get you started:

It’s all about the customers. You really need to understand what customers are thinking as you determine the most effective ways to refresh your brand.

Sometimes brand decision-makers decide against consumer research. Often that’s because they don’t think they can afford it, or perhaps it’s because they’re pretty sure they know what their customers want without asking them.

Your brand strategy has to connect with customers to be effective, so a clear understanding of what they think of your products, services and the overall brand experience is pretty important. Your chances of effectively positioning your brand for the future increase significantly if you include customer insight in the process.

Use formal or informal research to determine how you are perceived, who your customers see as your competitors and how you compare to those competitors on the criteria that really matter. Why do your customers choose to do business with you over the other options? Would they recommend you? Are you focusing on the aspects of your product or brand experience that matter most to your customers?

As you reassess and reposition your brand, make sure you clearly understand how to remain relevant to those who matter most.

Your employees are critical to your brand. Your company’s brand starts inside your company. Top managers need to clearly understand the business strategy and how the brand is to be positioned. But in most companies, the brand itself is communicated primarily through the actions and words of the company’s employees. Do your employees understand what your brand is? Do they know what makes it special?

A brand refresh is a perfect opportunity to start talking about the brand internally and get employees excited about it. Take the time to help every employee, regardless of their position or degree of customer contact, understand what the brand stands for, and their specific role in communicating the brand or providing the brand experience to customers and potential customers.

Branding is a company-wide effort. While your top marketing guru may be in charge of managing the brand refresh effort, a company-wide effort is necessary for success. Branding may be most visible in your advertising and marketing efforts, but if it’s not integrated across the entire organization, your efforts will fall flat. Employees have to live the brand every day and they have to believe in the brand promise.

Keep the best, evolve the rest. Branding well means staying relevant. Assumptions made when the brand was established may no longer hold true. When you look at what needs to change, also look closely at what should not change. Keep what matters most to your customers and to the core of your mission.

Every brand needs to be refreshed periodically to remain relevant as markets evolve. The refresh effort does not have to cost a lot, and it’s much better than not paying attention to your brand, which will cost you much more in the long run.

 

 

 

Lynn Manternach is brand arsonist and president at MindFire Communications Inc. (MindFireComm.com) in Cedar Rapids and Le Claire. Contact Lynn at lmanternach@mindfirecomm.com.