Plaster flakes and wall-paper turns yellow, new sofa doesn’t match old walls, and besides all this, your greatest wish is to knock spots off your neighbors with their new flat-screen TV-set. What shall you do? Right, you’ll begin repairing. Rebranding is the repairing of your brand. The repairing can be either complete or cosmetical depending on initial state of repaired object. Likewise, rebranding can be either complete or partial, and its goals differ from case to case.
Do you need rebranding?
Just as soon as household reconstruction, rebranding is a serious matter. New color of wallpaper will require new sofa, and you will be terrorized with demand to renew your wife’s wardrobe once she sees a new capacious armoire. Rebranding is a labour-intensive activity, so it has to be feasible and grounded. Look precisely at your brand and ask yourself “Does it really need a repair?”
Rebranding is necessary when a brand really needs repairing. Most often it does when:
- Existing brand doesn’t fit in the changed market conditions any more. If your trademark segment shortened, consumption level and buyer interest decreased, or your product went out of date, then you need rebranding. Rebranding may also be caused by change of target audience’s preferences and values.
- Brand’s market positions weakened significantly. The problem may be connected with not just positioning, but rebranding helps to shift the situation dramatically very often. In many cases market competition is the reason for brand’s drop-down, when competitors’ successful rebranding project results in their vigorous growth. In this case the necessity of your trademark rebranding is obvious.
- Your trademark positioning has been developed wrong fron the very beginning. Everything was right at first sight, but, for some reason, your products gather dust on shelves, and those, who should have dreamed about purchasing them, haven’t heard a word about your outstanding brand. Brand developers made a mistake, and idea, which you liked so much, proved to be inconceivable and strange for target audience. Surgical intervention is inevitable – rebranding is the only thing able to save the life of a trademark in such a situation.
Complete rebranding or “cosmetic repair”?
The answer to this question depends on the depth of problems which your brand is facing. When a bathroom curtain doesn’t match expensive Italian tiles, would you change the tiles?
Similarly, rebranding must be intended to solve the problem with minimum losses. Rebranding should be started with studying the current state of your trademark. The study shall discover basic positioning problems which determine the level of needed changes during rebranding.
If the problem lies in the positioning concept, then brand’s message has to be changed totally. It involves changing all brand attributes. This is the matter for complete rebranding.
When, for instance, brand name evokes only positive emotions, but package design doesn’t fit a general brand concept, then small changes, or partial rebranding, are enough. If, however, trademark is familiar to consumers and holds strong market positions, then rebranding requires a hack approach which could do an ill service to familiarity of brand on no account.
Rebranding is a process
Rebranding is a long-term and successive process. Fundamentally, rebranding is the creation of a new brand on the grounds of an old one, and sometimes contrary to it. That is why correct rebranding, like new brand development, should be started with marketing research which is aimed at showing the directions for work. In order to make an airplane start higher, you need to fling a gashion down and speed up. If you act vice versa, a trademark will fly like a wind, but downwards.
Marketing research helps to define what is your gashion and what should be added during rebranding. It shows what features of your trademark are considered to be advantages by your consumers, and what features are not up to your competitors. The further steps are absolutely logical – weaknesses are flung down, advantages are added. Research results are the basis for the whole process of rebranding.
When you launch the process of rebranding, you should be patient, after all, repair, even a cosmetic one, is not a matter of one day.
Where can I order re-branding?
Certainly, in GBS. And what were you expecting to read on our web site?
Rebranding by Brand Solutions Company GBS has a number of advantages.
We offer full package of rebranding services. We have own departments of marketing researches, branding and design. That is why we are able to implement full-cycle rebranding of a trademark. This provides decreased expenses, time saving and, what is more important, integrity of new brand concept.
Besides, we have wide experience in implementation of trademark rebranding projects. You can view our works on the page Projects. We don’t speak bluntly; we eliminate weak points nattily and replace them with advantages.
Even the Sun changes its color
Rebranding of a successful and actual trademark is making problem for nothing. But the day will come when even the market’s giants may feel the need in rebranding.
One day, having understood that its positioning was out of date, and brand had become trivial and undistinguished, “McDonald’s” held a successful rebranding to become more childish brand. “Coca-Cola” conquered a market when it became a refreshment drink instead of medical product. Brand “Marlboro” became a legend due to rebranding which mould this ladies cigarettes mark to emphatically men’s brand.
Nobody is guaranteed against difficulties, but there is always a way out. Rebranding is just one of possible ways; after all, a stitch in time saves nine.
