Every brand evolves over time. One day, your brand will outgrow the look and feel you’ve used for years. The audience you speak to will change their behaviors. Your purpose will take on new meaning. And eventually, you’ll need to redesign the look and feel that worked so well, and relaunch your brand.
Just the idea of relaunching all your newly designed brand assets can feel overwhelming. How are you possibly going to coordinate all the changes and updates? Don’t worry, with the right tools and a strategic approach any brand can roll out new assets at a global scale.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy to do. But if Burger King and McDonald's can update logos and visual packaging designs across global digital and physical locations, you can redesign and relaunch your brand. First, let’s start by defining what a brand relaunch means in this context.
What is a brand relaunch?
A brand relaunch is the repositioning of your brand within the marketplace. It often begins with an evaluation of an organization’s goals, brand essence, and market positioning. Typically, a brand relaunch impacts many of the elements in your brand identity kit including visual style, logos, color profiles, and more. A relaunch can vary to include a full redesign, strategic updates, or a simple refresh.
Tips for a successful brand relaunch
Whether you’re looking at a full redesign or just a refresh, determining how to relaunch a brand should be your first step. Your brand relaunch needs to be deliberate and strategic. It includes a lot of planning before you even get to the exciting visual elements.
This is your new look we’re talking about and changing it isn’t as easy as running to the store. So go into it with a well-constructed plan that will help you meet your goals and long-term objectives.
1. Define your "why"
Before making any public-facing changes, you must first understand the essence of why you're doing a relaunch. Common catalysts for a relaunch include mergers, acquisitions, outdated branding, or company expansion. But your “why” is more about what you’re trying to achieve.
Think: gaining a stronger foothold in your market, differentiating your brand from the competition, or successfully launching a new product. Understanding your “why” will make it easier to measure and celebrate your achievement because you’ll know what success looks like.
2. Understand the full picture
The way you view your brand internally might not match how external audiences perceive it. When gathering the full picture, tap your entire audience including current employees, potential employees, customers, future customers, and anyone who comes in contact with your brand.
Take time to understand multiple perspectives. Conduct internal and external interviews. Do competitive research. Use surveys. And understand the potential future of your market space. Determining how your brand is currently perceived can help further define the goals of your brand relaunch. This gives you evidence to refer to during the planning process, making it easier to compare where you are with where you want to be.
3. Obtain buy-in from internal stakeholders
Buy-in from company leaders is critical. The scope of a brand relaunch can creep quickly and you’ll need internal teams in your corner when they do. Effectively communicating the reasons for a brand relaunch — and the desired outcomes — will go far in getting everyone on board.
Doing so will allow you to secure the time, resources, and talent needed to execute a successful relaunch. And keeping everyone in the loop throughout the process will encourage excitement while managing expectations.
4. Get emotional
Many elements of your brand aren’t tangible. They’re felt. The more your audience connects with your brand, the better. Emotions drive purchasing decisions. They foster relationships. And ultimately, emotional investment builds brand loyalty.
A brand relaunch should take this into consideration during the planning phases. Consider testing different versions and iterations of your brand prototypes before finalizing your decision. A relaunch is a perfect opportunity to increase the emotional connection with your brand.
5. Phased rollout or flip of the switch?
Depending on the size of your relaunch, you’ll need to consider how to release it into the world with a brand rollout plan. A phased rollout means that you’ll be able to release your new creations into the world faster — as each element is created, but this also means you'll have two brands for the duration of the project.
However, releasing the new brand all at once might require duplicate work as the new brand is built and the old one is actively maintained as the old brand can't remain static as the new brand is built. This could be a struggle depending on your resources. So make sure to weigh the pros and cons of all rollout approaches and pick the one that works best for you. Don’t forget to communicate the plan as well so that people know what to expect.
6. Be realistic about timing
A rebranding signifies things are changing in your organization. And change takes time. You need to dedicate enough time and resources to do it well, so your audience takes notice. A full brand relaunch — including visual expression, value messaging, and more — can easily last a year, or longer.
Underestimating the lead time for a project this size will often cause frustration, missed opportunities, and poor-quality results. Being upfront and realistic with your stakeholders and mapping your project out by phases will keep things running smoothly and ensure a successful end result.
Benefits of launching a new brand
Relaunching your brand is exciting. You’ll be proud to see months (and possibly years) of hard work all come together to achieve your goals. And the thrill of seeing your sharp new logo or updated visuals out in the world is just the icing on the cake. A meticulously planned and well-executed relaunch will create a wide range of benefits for your company, including:
- Alignment of your brand elements across all channels to ensure they meet the needs and interests of your audience
- Improvement in the quality of internal communications as a result of brand education and awareness
- Elevated positioning amongst new and existing competitors in your industry
- New or renewed interest within your target audience
- Increased overall conversion opportunities and brand loyalty
And if you make brand consistency one of your main priorities, your brand relaunch can lead to an increase in revenue of up to 23%. It won’t happen overnight, and it’ll take a serious commitment to brand management to get there, but it’s worth it. With the right brand management software, you can also protect your brand from unnecessary risk.
So, are you a little less overwhelmed than when you first started thinking about launching all your new brand assets? We hope so. With the right approach and technology to back you up, you can actually look forward to your brand relaunch.
Get excited about your brand relaunch
Your brand is going to evolve and need a facelift one day. There’s no way around it. So you might as well look at relaunching your brand as an adventure. It’s not only a way to meet new goals but also stretch your creative muscles and get teams to unite behind a common goal.
And while they can be daunting, successful launches are invigorating and inspiring. So take the time to effectively research, plan, and communicate your process. It will keep your adventure on track and make it much more rewarding when your efforts are ready to be seen by all
Your relaunch could include a new logo, all your brand assets, or a whole new story and visual design for your brand. Whatever the scale, you need to make sure all your brand assets are secure, centralized, and searchable.
With the Widen Collective® as your brand management software, you have a strong foundation to help share your new brand experience with the world. Get your today to see how brand management software can support your brand relaunch.