DIY Management: How to successfully rebrand your company

Darren Dahl, senior associate dean of UBC’s Sauder School of Business and director of the Robert H. Lee Graduate School, and Jason Dauphinee, creative director at Eclipse Creative in Victoria, discuss when, why and how to go about rebranding

1. Figure out what problem you are trying to solve

Never rebrand simply to rebrand, says Dahl. Companies typically rebrand because something has changed—for example, you are losing relevance in the marketplace or customers don’t understand you. A rebranding process can come after multiple years in business, notes Dauphinee. “Maybe you’re finding you’re starting to plateau a little bit. You feel like maybe you’re not getting enough penetration into certain markets that you would like to.”

2. Explore who you are and where you’re going

“What do you want to convey and to whom?” says Dahl. If your customer has changed, who is your customer now? Dauphinee recommends asking: What makes you different? What makes you remarkable? What are you offering to the world that’s different from everybody else, and how can you leverage that to make yourself more successful? “That really is at the core of a brand,” he says. “It’s very rarely the logo that draws people to your business. It’s how you conduct your business that actually has the biggest impact.”

3. Express yourself

This is the stage where you know what you can truthfully say and how you can really sell yourself, says Dauphinee.
“It really should be undeniable that you’re being honest and that you’re hitting the right people and then combining that with some clever or quirky marketing.” Executing and building the rebrand “may involve everything from working on the website to changing colours, redoing the logo, maybe even renaming and new storytelling,” says Dahl. “All the different aspects that make up the brand.”

4. Test the new branding

“Before you launch, you want to make sure that everything is making sense, it’s coherent and it maps across the board,” says Dahl. Ask customers and employees whether it works. “It goes far, far deeper than how your letterhead looks, how your logo looks or how you display your products,” says Dauphinee. “It really is a promise at its core. It’s a promise that you make to your consumer, and it’s a voice that needs to carry across every level of your business.”

5. Prepare for takeoff

There should be a formal plan for how the rebrand will actually launch and come to market, says Dahl. For example, will it be a celebration or evolve over time? “The execution of the rebranding and how it touches the customers needs to be formally and strategically identified and planned. It should not be an ad hoc, ‘Let’s do this today,’ because when the customer and your employees experience the new brand, they want to understand what it means.”