How to communicate a re-brand
Many companies undergo a re-brand and the reasons for doing so are many and varied.
It could be a result of an acquisition, when bringing all the businesses together under a single, unified brand presents a much clearer choice for customers. We’ve also helped businesses re-brand because one of the group companies has a much stronger brand recognition than the others, and adopting the stronger can create a much clear customer proposition. In other instances, we’ve helped on re-brands where our client simply feels that the current brand doesn’t reflect the modern ethos and direction of the business.
The benefits of a re-brand make it definitely worth the effort. Take, for example, a company with two businesses within the group each operating as a separate brand but both supplying the same market sectors. From a marketing communications point of view this is not an ideal situation because it means, for example, that they need two social media accounts and two sets of posts and double the SEO strategy. It’s the same with their PR strategy; each business would need its own strategy, which doubles the amount of resource to implement.
Re-branding as a single, unified entity means that this duplication is eliminated and there are considerable advantages on digital platforms of concentrating the SEO and keyword search terms to a single brand.
From a PR perspective, too, having a single brand means that you have a clearer message to communicate to the marketplace, whilst reflecting the wider and more diverse range of products and services you now offer to customers.
Designing a new brand can bring its challenges, although we have worked on numerous re-brands and can usually reflect the characteristics of the business through the style of the brand. It’s not easy, though, and often requires us to gain a true understanding of your customers’ perceptions about your business. Specialising in the construction and manufacturing sector definitely helps with this because we understand customer aspirations, routes to market and how they perceive certain types of fonts, colours and design.
Whatever the reason for undertaking a re-brand it’s important to communicate it to your customers in a clear, concise way. It can involve us working with other departments in your business. For example, we recently carried out an audit for a client with multiple branches around the country so we could let them know the type and quantity of re-branded signage, POS and brochures needed.
We see this as part of the overall PR and communications strategy. Behind the scenes we are busy working on press releases, articles and white papers, which keep your business in front of customers throughout the rebranding process. Of course, gaining coverage for the re-brand itself is important and we are often asked; How do we communicate our new brand to the marketplace through the press?
We often guide our clients towards a partnership publishing approach on this because, although the brand is the most important thing to your business, editors tend to prefer product or market news. Partnership publishing means we secure a full page editorial in, say, the three leading trade magazines in the sectors you operate and that allows us to get across key brand messages to your customers.
Working with our clients, we also create internal communications for them, such as emails and e-newsletters. We can even create presentations for your salesforce that conveys key messages about the re-brand, which they can use to inform customers. These are great for keeping customers informed of the rebranding process and includes a Q&A section that covers important subjects that your customer might ask such as invoicing and pricing through to launch of the new, re-branded website.
In summary, re-branding can be highly effective in portraying a positive image for your combined business under one brand. Once the initial phase of the re-brand is complete, our PR and digital media strategy, including social media, shifts to building brand awareness and equity. After all, that is the reason for doing the rebrand; a new name and new future for your business.
If you are thinking of re-branding or are looking for help with your Public Relations or digital marketing, please drop our friendly, helpful team a line at hello@dragonflypr.co.uk or call on 0114 349 5344.
Dragonfly PR is a Sheffield-based PR and digital marketing agency that specialises in media relations, content marketing and organic SEO for construction and manufacturing companies.