What can make or break your rebranding?

Rebranding is a great way to refresh an existing company and connect with new audiences. If rebranding is done effectively it can help keep a company current and ahead of market trends. Your company brand is so more than just your company logo. It is the message that you portray about your business across all your communication channels and establishes how your audience feels about your business when they think of you. So what exactly can make, or perhaps more importantly break, your rebranding?

Make

  • Select a specific market you want to connect with

Prior to rebranding ensure you have a clear reason why you want to rebrand. Think about the specific market you are trying to reach and ensure every choice you make relates back to that audience.

  • Support your rebranding with digital changes

While a new marketing campaign and company image are great contributions to rebranding, they won’t have long-lasting effects unless you have made digital changes that support your rebranding efforts, such as a new website design and new social media pages.

  • Base your rebranding on customer feedback

Interact with your clients and determine what did and didn’t work for your old brand. For example, if they found your website hard to navigate ensure User Experience is a priority in your rebranding efforts. Try to determine what about your original branding resonated with your customers and try to enhance on this in your rebranding.

Break

  • Base your rebranding on customer feedback

While it can be tempting to want to base your rebranding on a successful competitor, you need to have your own voice and presence as a company. Don’t copy the ideas of another brand as this will ensure your company always remains secondary to them.

  • Don’t base your rebranding on colour

While changing up the colour scheme of your company can be a great addition to rebranding, on its own it is not enough to make a difference. Rebranding is so much more than a new logo or colour scheme; it is a tool to take your brand to a new level and create a digital platform to support it.

An example of poor rebranding was the attempt made by GAP to reinvent their company based solely on a logo. The rebrand was based around a new logo which seemed to come from nowhere and appeal no one in particular. The original GAP logo had been used for 20 years and was a popular fashion statement, removing the logo lost much of GAP’s identify and uniqueness. Needless to say, after just six days, GAP reverted back to their old branding, taking a huge financial loss by doing so. What we can learn from GAP is that rebranding must have a purpose and it must be done without losing the uniqueness and identity of a company.

If you need help with rebranding, contact Trident today. We are a creative agency, Midlands based that offer graphic design services, rebranding for businesses, SEO and website builder.

Written By Adam Burrage
Managing Partner at Trident

Monthly Roundup – June 2019

Welcome back to the Trident Monthly round-up!

The aim of these monthly posts is to keep you abreast of all the weird and wonderful news and insights to come out of the world of marketing. Every month, our team will pick our favourite campaigns, brand insights and marketing trends that you can use to enhance your marketing knowledge or even as inspiration to delight your audience.

So let’s get cracking with our top stories from May:

Wearable Print Marketing from Old Spice

Old Spice’s ads are both bizarre and wickedly charming, cutting edge and occasionally out of left field. The brand continues to push creative limits in its latest print ad – a scented paper blazer meant to make any man stylish and smelling good.

It’s a print ad experience like no other, with the scented, paper blazer insert placed in an issue of GQ. When a reader opens the scent strip of the ad they will smell the “luxurious smells of Old Spice Captain,” and they’ll also be able to wear them and even flaunt them if they put on the full-sized disposable paper blazer, scented with Old Spice Captain.

Source: The Drum

HSBC – All English Final

HSBC UK has championed internationalism in football, as an extension of its ‘We Are Not An Island’ campaign, to celebrate the first all English Champions League and Europa League finals. In January this year, a year on from introducing it’s ‘Together We Thrive’ brand promise and ‘Global Citizen’ TV campaign HSBC launched its ‘We Are Not An Island’ campaign.

It comprised of a series of copy-led print executions that celebrated the elements of British life that are indebted to the nation’s connections to the wider world. Versions of the billboards have appeared in major cities across the UK, each featuring local references unique to the UK, such as the formation of Oasis in Manchester. Continuing on the pro-internationalism message, its latest poster celebrates the diversity of the ‘all-English’ final.

Source: The Drum

Hackney half marathon rebrands

The aim of these monthly posts is to keep you abreast of all the weird and wonderful news and insights to come out of the world of marketing. Every month, our team will pick our favourite campaigns, brand insights and marketing trends that you can use to enhance your marketing knowledge or even as inspiration to delight your audience.

In a bid to attract more participants, especially from a younger audience, London’s Hackney marathon has decided to switch up the branding.

The overall identity, from the diverse photography through to the logo made up of many parts, looks to represent the idea of community, and change perceptions of running.

The new identity launched at the Hackney Half Marathon and Festival 2019, which ran 17-19 May, across wayfinding, signage, a new recovery area for race finishers and bespoke medals created for the five-kilometre run. The branding has also rolled out across social media and the website, print and marketing materials and apparel.

Source: Design Week

Genius use of billboards by charity

To generate greater visibility of its helpline and services, Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) has launched a campaign that aims to shatter the stigma of reaching out.

To normalise the service for those who might be scared of reaching out, the screens demonstrates how often the helpline receives calls by connecting them live to the phone line.Mirroring the incoming calls in real time, the campaign publically shows how many people are opening up and receiving support from the charity every day. Every time Calm receives a call, the ads will be interrupted, and once answered, passers-by will be alerted by a loud ringtone that captures their attention.

Brilliant idea and execution!

Source: The Drum

Walkers recruit the Spice Girls!

In order to ensure its new positioning lands with impact, Walkers identified the reunion tour as ‘the biggest cultural moment of the year’ and therefore a perfect moment for the crisp brand to tap into.

Walkers new positioning is focused on the human insight that if you have something irresistibly tasty (like Walkers crisps in your hands) and someone asks you to share, then you’re met with an awkward dilemma – to share, or not to share?

As part of the campaign, Walkers is on the lookout for the #BestFanEver, who could win the chance to meet the girls on tour. Launching the competition, the ‘spoof’ ad sees the Spice Girls on the way to surprise their ‘biggest fan’ at his house with VIP tour tickets. Ecstatic at first to find the Spice Girls at his home, things change when Emma Bunton asks the ‘superfan’ for one of his Walkers crisps. Superfan Dev knows he should share with his favourite band, but he really doesn’t want to, and when it comes to it, he just can’t hand over any of his crisps— not even to his icons.

Source: The Drum

Straws are weapons

Eco-friendliness and straws have been a big talking point in recent months, due to many big corporations such as Starbucks opting to go for paper straws instead of plastic straws, which have been proven to cause environmental damage to oceans. Although more and more brands are adopting paper straws, the feeling is still that not enough is being done to stop the use of plastic straws. To aid in the awareness of this issue, print marketing campaigns such as the one below are being seen more and more.

The Plaza Central mall has launched a campaign to make the restaurants placed within the mall to not use plastic straws. Using strong imagery of turtles and whales being “attacked” by straws, the mall is hoping to reduce the use of plastic straws. The imagery and execution of the campaign is certainly strong and memorable. It will be interesting to see how many restaurants will listen and act on the campaign.

Written By Adam Burrage
Managing Partner at Trident