Rebranding 101: What to Know Before Starting a Brand Refresh

This content was written and published for Shutterstock Inc.

Just what goes into a rebranding project? Explore the basics of rebranding and learn how to prepare your marketing team for the big overhaul.

Most marketers will experience a rebranding project at some point in their careers. Regardless of size or industry, every brand experiences periods of growth, plateaus, and declines. A rebrand can be an effective tool for marketers at important or opportune times.

Outside of the strategic planning that goes into a rebrand, the actual execution of it can be daunting for the marketers tasked with it.

Here’s a little context. In a recent rebrand of a Shutterstock business unit, there were over 1,000 publicly facing visual assets to consider. These assets appeared on channels as varied as websites, landing pages, blog posts, ads, social media, email campaigns, partnerships, videos, sales materials, and more. It’s hard work to manage the deliverables of your next rebrand project. We’ve come up some considerations to think about before you get started on replacing assets.

Leadership Buy-In

Before you embark on a resource heavy rebrand, pause and look back at your strategic plan for the project. Above all, ensure you have leadership buy-in. A rebrand requires more than just the CMO or CEO giving marketing the green light and budget to proceed. A rebrand project needs to be communicated and embodied by the C-Suite to be effective.

You’ll come across both enthusiasm and resistance to a rebrand from different internal stakeholders. Leadership can play a big role in fostering positivity and squashing negativity. Use time with leadership to address gaps or concerns about the strategy. Make sure you have answers to the important questions that the team executing the rebrand will have. Set up recurring check-ins between marketing and leadership.  That way there’s transparency throughout the project and opportunities to leverage leadership if needed.

Tip: Communication is Key

• Take every opportunity to have leadership communicate with your internal stakeholders what’s happening throughout a rebrand.

• Tactics like email updates and instructions from leadership provide transparent insight into the status of the rebrand.

• Recurring items like town hall meetings, leadership visits to regional offices, and launch parties are a few ways to build internal support from the top down.

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Channel Audit

Do an audit of the visual content on your marketing channels. Create a record to keep you focused on the tasks at hand and to track progress when managing the project. Auditing the visual content on your marketing channels is an eye opening experience. You’ll see the volume, nuances, and connections shared among your many marketing channels. Pay extreme attention to detail at this stage. It can save you from problems later on.

Record details like the channel, applicable URLs, visual changes, copy changes, resources, owners, status, retirement, and also estimated time to complete. Consider creating smaller audits for each channel. The details you record will vary considerably between them. For example, you’ll want page level details for website visuals, but you likely won’t need post level details for social media.

Tip: Channels Are Not All Equal

• The greatest volumes of rebrand work will likely fall within your website, campaign pages, emails, and sales material.

• Budget more time and resources for these channels. Do your research on what’s required for rebranding channels where you don’t have full control, such as social media profiles.

• Marketing partners and external publications also require time and notification to ensure you’ve got your bases covered.

Project Management

Using project management tools and best practices will go a long way to ensure an on-time and on-budget rebrand.

A project manager or coordinator can be a valuable resource. If you don’t already have one on your team, you may want to borrow someone from another department. Alternatively, if you are working with an agency, consider handing over the project management responsibilities to their team. They’ll already have experience managing large deadline-driven projects. Your team needs to respect the authority of the project manager. This will empower that person to drive schedules and keep team members accountable.

Beyond people resources, you should also use technology to manage your rebrand project. This could be in the form of shared project trackers and gantt charts in google sheets, or any number of paid project management tools such as Basecamp, Trello, Podio, Smartsheets, MS Project, or JIRA. The key is to use a tool that allows for easy collaboration, notifications, and workflow tracking. Excel sheets are not an appropriate project management tool.

Tip: Timing is Everything

• Be liberal in how much time you give for tasks. Be conscious of tasks with cross-departmental needs or a higher volume of assets. Don’t forget that your team’s day-to-day responsibilities don’t stop during a rebrand.

• Down periods like the summer or end of year are often a good time to do a rebrand.

• Weigh the risks and rewards of planning a rebrand launch around a major industry or other company event. Crossing over these events leaves little flexibility for unseen delays.

  
  

Resource Alignment

Rebranding requires a lot of resources. When setting up your resources, keep in mind the capacity and skill sets of internal teams. This will help you decide how to add external resources either through people or technology.

Have a budget conversation with your marketing leadership or project manager. This will help you understand how to support rebranding tasks. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can handle a rebrand 100% internally without even a bit of budget and external support.

Consider how external support can help complete larger tasks within a rebrand project. They can save you time on assignments like website relaunches, email redevelopment, or blog migration.

Also be aware of what rebrand tasks require more cross departmental coordination than others and plan accordingly. For example, refreshing sales material can mean everything from new explainer videos to new pitch decks. These tasks will require different levels of collaboration.

Tip: Rethink Your Resources

• Resources are more than just employees, agencies, or freelancers. They can also include any number of marketing services or other departments.

• Stock creative services, printing services, media and PR needs, digital asset management tools, and media buying services, among others, are are all essential resources in a rebrand.

• Consider how alternative resources get used by employees, agencies, or freelancers working on the rebrand. Think about how they can make them more efficient.

Get Noticed

Rebranding can be an exciting and rewarding experience for marketers. Few projects get a marketing department noticed more than successfully implementing a rebrand.

Opportunities to define and control the presentation and story of a business for years to come don’t come around often. When they do, make sure you’re set up for success.