We analyze when a brand should change its appearance and positioning, what specialists are needed for this and how to measure the result. Examples of successful and unsuccessful rebranding.
What is rebranding?
Differences between rebranding and redesign
When is rebranding necessary?
Goals and objectives of rebranding
How to measure the effectiveness of rebranding?
Stages of rebranding
Examples of successful and unsuccessful rebranding
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What is rebranding?
Table of Contents
Rebranding is a complete change of the brand essence to increase sales. The visual style, positioning and communication with clients change, but continuity with the “old” brand is necessarily maintained so that the client still recognizes the company and its products.
Let’s see how this works using Danissimo as an example.
The brand entered the market in 2004 and sold successfully for two years. During this time, it had many competitors, and at some point, Danissimo “got lost” on the shelf. This had a negative impact on profits, and the brand decided to change radically.
Initially, Danissimo curds were positioned as a snack that you can take with you to satisfy your hunger at any time. The emphasis was on rationality – speed, nutrition, convenience. The logo features a clock that reflects the key values of the product and the brand.
As part of the redesign, the Imadesign agency completely revised this concept:
They replaced the rational with the emotional: now “Danissimo” “helps you take a break from work and give yourself a moment of joy and pleasure.”
We changed the packaging: we made the design more airy, with a hint of tenderness and lightness.
We left continuity in the logo: its font and shape remained the same, only the image of the watch disappeared.
According to Danone representatives, this allowed them to significantly increase sales and profits from the brand’s products. This is the essence of rebranding.
Differences between rebranding and redesign
When studying the topic of brand “rebooting“, you will come across several similar terms: redesign, repositioning and relaunch. People often get confused in these processes, taking one for the other. But it is important to distinguish between them: each of them costs several hundred thousand rubles or more, you can waste money on something your brand did not need.
Redesign is a change in the visual elements of a brand: logo , packaging, website, advertising banners. Redesign is part of rebranding, but can also be done separately from it.
For example, in 2019, Volkswagen redesigned its logo and dealerships to update the brand’s image. This happened for the first time in 19 years, while the positioning remained unchanged.
Repositioning is a significant change in brand values. It changes the perception of the brand by the target audience, but does not affect the product itself. Repositioning is also part of rebranding.
For example, the Wellhead agency changed the positioning of a shopping center in Samara based on the insight that shopping is stressful for people:
But with relaunch it’s more difficult, because it’s a related concept.
Relaunch is a restart, practically the creation of a new brand . It is based on a change in communication with the audience, but it can also include a change in design and positioning. The key difference between relaunch and rebranding is that the changes are more global. For example, like Sber. Although it retained continuity, in fact the brand has practically become new: from a conservative state bank with history, it has turned into a modern IT company.
When is rebranding necessary?
A brand’s sales cannot always be equally stable. Competitors appear, audience habits and the surrounding context change – all this affects customer demand and choice.
Rebranding is carried out when:
the brand is outdated,
competition in the niche has increased,
the audience’s needs have changed or new ones have emerged,
sales of goods are falling.
If a brand has only a part of the problems from the list, they can be “treated” selectively. For example, to highlight products on the shelves, it is enough to conduct a redesign, and to update the needs of the audience – repositioning.
Goals and objectives of rebranding
The goals of rebranding in marketing can be to increase profits, revenue or margins.
The tasks of rebranding are stages of achieving the goal. For example, they can be as follows:
rejuvenate the audience,
stand out on the shelf,
penetrate a new market,
shift the focus of the product.
Objectives are usually defined at the audit and strategy development stage.
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How to measure the effectiveness of rebranding?
If we take the growth of profit, revenue or margin as the goal, then it is logical to measure the effectiveness of rebranding by them. But in addition to them, it is worth looking at other business indicators. Which ones – depends on the type of product.
If revenue has not started to grow after rebranding, the selected indicators will help to find the reason. Maybe the “restart” did not work, or maybe after all the work the company did not have money left for a large-scale advertising campaign and fewer customers than necessary learned about the rebranding. If the audience is too small, the growth of quality indicators will not be able to significantly increase revenue. Here the issue will be in budget planning and financing, and not in rebranding.
It is important to compare the indicators correctly. Any business has seasonality, which means that comparing the month before rebranding and the month after rebranding is incorrect, a large error may arise.
To exclude it, you need to compare similar periods: May with May, the second half of the year with the second half of the year, and so on.
Stages of rebranding
The rebranding process consists of five stages:
Audit of the current situation.
Repositioning.
Redesign.
Definition of communication strategy.
Implementation.
In real life, people usually think about rebranding when various indicators in a company start to deteriorate: sales are falling, goods are being taken out of stock, contracts are being terminated, and the volume of one-time purchases is decreasing. This is a reason to think about what is happening and to conduct the first stage of work – an audit, which will show what needs to be worked on.
Audit of the current situation
Who participates : a company’s brand manager or a branding agency.
What needs to be done :
record current business performance,
assess your place in the market,
study competitors’ brands,
identify the attitude of the target audience towards your brand and conduct any other analysis that will allow you to understand which direction to move in and whether you need rebranding at all.
The result : a detailed marketing analysis that explains why business performance has deteriorated.
A brand manager is an indispensable person for a company that is going to rebrand. He is maximally immersed in business processes, knows the market and audience well, can objectively validate the work of contractors, and this saves the brand tens of hours and hundreds of thousands of rubles.
You can learn all this from scratch on the Brand Manager course.
An agency can also conduct an audit, but it will take longer and be more expensive: someone has to immerse specialists in the product and market, provide access to figures and answer all questions. That is, a person who will lead the rebranding project within the company is still needed, and the work deadlines may increase due to other clients and the difficulties of detailed immersion in the client’s business.
Repositioning
Who is participating : branding agency.
What needs to be done :
define new values, meanings and ideas that the brand wants to convey to the audience,
work out the concept of changing positioning.
Result: a new positioning concept based on the in-depth research from the first stage.
Here the company will still need a branding agency: due to a large team of creators, it can offer 5-7 options for new positioning. This is much more than one person can come up with. The task of the brand manager is to validate rebranding ideas and choose the one that will best suit the brand and audience.
For example, the Nimax Brand agency proposed such positioning to the grocery delivery service Smekalka:
Who is participating : branding agency.
What needs to be done : update the brand’s appearance to suit the new positioning or make it more modern and relevant to increase its attractiveness.
Result : a brand book with an updated brand design system and its key elements (color palette, logo, design distribution principles, etc.).
Defining a Communication Strategy
Who participates : brand manager and marketer within the company or advertising agency.
What needs to be done : think about how the company will tell the audience about the “new” brand.
Deliverable : a communications strategy ready to be launched. It should define the tone of communications, the key idea of communications (Big Idea), messages for different communication channels, a key visual image, a strategy and order of using different communication channels, including digital and promotional events if necessary.
Here’s an example: a communications strategy for the viral disease prevention product Barrier Reef from Wellhead.
Who participates : marketer or advertising agency, trade marketing specialist, brand manager.
What needs to be done : launch everything that was defined in the communications strategy, track the results of the rebranding.
Result : the audience knows about the new brand, target indicators grow.
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Examples of successful and unsuccessful rebranding
It is difficult to assess the success or failure of rebranding from the outside: few share financial indicators. But you can assess the result based on the audience’s reaction.
As a good example, we have already looked at the Danissimo case. Let’s look at a counter-example: the rebranding of Tropicana juices.
In 2009, the company changed the packaging, but instead of growing, sales fell by 20%. The brand did not maintain continuity, and consumers did not recognize Tropicana juices on the shelf, which cost the company $27 million.
Let’s sum it up:
Rebranding is a set of measures that changes not only the appearance of the brand, but also its positioning and communication with the audience.
The goal of rebranding is to improve key business indicators: profit, revenue and other metrics.
Rebranding is not always necessary: sometimes it is enough to just update the appearance of the product.
When rebranding, it is important to maintain continuity with the “old” brand, otherwise even loyal customers will not recognize you and will stop buying.
