The topic of rebranding is particularly relevant nowadays, even business giants from time to time need to make changes to their brand or its components. There are several reasons for this, for example, the brand is outdated or lagging behind, has ceased to perform the required tasks, the target audience has changed, or there has been a change in the market conditions, when in a highly competitive niche the brand becomes less attractive than the more active competitors, and the brand could have been built wrongly from the beginning.
All large and small companies with different frequency resort to rebranding and change of corporate identity. For some, the renewal of the brand's visual presentation is a tribute to fashionable trends in logo construction, for some it is an excuse to make a fuss about the brand, to give a modern look to their face or to express their attitude to the environment. What is rebranding after all?
Rebranding is a set of measures to change the whole brand or its components, such as name, logo, visual design, positioning, ideology. When we talk about rebranding, we mean changes in the image in the minds of consumers. Rebranding helps to bring the brand in line with the current state of business and company plans. Rebranding involves changes in all brand communications, from packaging to advertising materials. As a result of Rebranding, as a rule, there is no complete liquidation of the old brand. Rebranding helps the brand evolve. Having received updated communications and the shell, the brand can become significantly fresher, more emotional. It gains new strength, acquires new qualities, becomes more attractive to existing customers and gains new ones. Minor changes in visual elements or advertising policy will not be rebranding. Rebranding is not a process of changing the appearance and reflects qualitative changes in the positioning and strategy of the company.
Rebranding is always a fact of total revision of almost all attributes of the brand. The economy, as well as other spheres of life, is subject to fashion. Sometimes everybody almost at the same time starts rebranding without thinking about whether it is necessary or not. The concepts of repositioning, restyling and redesign are related to the concept of rebranding. Brand repositioning is the change of its main characteristics and their fixation in the minds of target audiences. Restyling - changing the color of the logo and other visual attributes in accordance with the new positioning and new characteristics of the brand. Redesign - changing the company's logo and corporate identity. For example, Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola companies periodically change the characteristics of their visual attributes.
The main purpose of rebranding is to become closer to the target audience of the product, to correspond to the changing market realities and to increase the overall competitiveness of the product. Often companies fail because of the inability to focus on the really achievable position of the brand, wanting to achieve imaginary unattainable positions. Very often, their desire to achieve over-ambitious goals exceeds the real potential of the brand. Sometimes the imaginary new position is so far from the existing perception of the brand that it cannot become a realistic goal of the new positioning. Many factors force marketers to think about rebranding their brands. Changing the needs of the audience blurs the existing brand position. At the same time, tougher competition caused by the emergence of new players and innovative products, the development of new distribution channels and the use of new means of promotion, forces marketers to return to the origins of their product development and start over again.
Rebranding is made up of several stages such as
Brand audit is a study of its condition, assessment of attitude to it, knowledge and level of loyalty of target audiences, identification of weaknesses and strengths, understanding the depth of rebranding, analysis of financial resources of the company.
Development of rebranding strategy and tactics is the definition of brand elements subject to change.
Updating the basic elements of brand identity is a new positioning, new elements of visual and verbal identification system; new brand communication strategy.
Communicating the meaning of rebranding to the audience.