As your industry changes, do you get the sense that your brand is tiring, or perhaps not working as hard as it could? Maybe you’ve seen creative results suffer, brand managers lose focus or internal engagement dissipate. You might consider developing a new brand identity to solve these challenges, but at the same time realize the barriers to securing budget and gaining leadership support. Fortunately, rebranding is not the only path to achieving brand and business goals. Before dedicating millions of dollars, take a closer look at your current brand, identifying ways to strengthen the impact internally and externally.
1. Diagnose gaps and weaknesses
Gaining an understanding of how and where your brand assets are used is a good place to start. Gather examples from brand users to create a clearer picture of what the brand looks like in practice and where there are opportunities to improve execution. You might discover that certain tools or templates are missing from your collection or that the brand hasn’t been extended far enough to account for particular touchpoints. Additionally, it could be time to rally internal brand users, educating and empowering them to push the brand forward. It’s also important to create a forum for ideas and feedback. Listening to your employees is critical to understand their needs when delivering your desired brand experience.
2. Refresh or bolster brand assets
It could be time to update certain brand assets and breathe a little life into them. While a complete rebrand is certainly an option, it doesn’t have to be that extreme. It could mean using your brand identity in an evolved way by flexing your colors, fonts, or other graphic elements, or creating new assets that didn’t exist before to introduce the brand to overlooked digital applications or marketing collateral. It can be difficult to anticipate all of your branded needs at the time of launch - however long ago that was - but now could be the perfect time to round out your suite of branded assets.
3. Update and schedule brand trainings
Has it been a while since you introduced your brand identity? For most organizations it’s been years. Since then, you’ve certainly brought on new employees and people have changed roles. It could be time to update your brand training to re-engage employees. This reminds or educates brand users around the purpose of the brand, the vision for delivering it and what part they play in bringing it to life. It’s a good reason to get people together.
4. Stand up a brand governance program
Move beyond guidelines to empower people with the tools and processes they need to drive and measure brand adoption. Regardless of how long your brand has been in existence, a brand governance structure can help to drive brand decision making and improve delivery. It’s important to recognize that people learn in different ways and have different levels of expertise, so tools and processes must meet them where they’re at. This could mean getting creative with how information is disseminated, from the type of media to the type of channel, while striking a balance between educational, operational and motivational content. Rolling out this type of program places timely emphasis on the importance of brand to internal and external audiences and how it can accelerate business performance. Associated tools such as brand guidelines, a digital asset management system, short video tutorials or automated review/approval workflows, make it easier for the organization to synchronize brand execution.
As we help our partners assess and evaluate the strength of their brand in today’s world, we collaborate to determine what’s working and what needs to change. There are plenty of ways to reinvigorate your brand without going through a complete rebrand. That’s why we focus on planning, building and managing brands at TenTen Group. Let’s talk about ways to make your brand work harder. Reach out at hello@tentengroup.com!
