Changing your brand identity

Having an appropriate and consistent brand or corporate identity is increasingly important. With so many messages being promoted to us all every day through newspapers, TV, posters, websites and mobile phone messaging, it is becoming increasingly difficult to be recognised.

To be recognised you need to have a clear and distinct identity – perhaps a symbol, certainly a typeface and preferably a corporate colour. That identity needs to work well in all forms of media – everything from a black and white fax sheet to corporate clothing. Your corporate identity says a lot about your organisation and a poor identity will create a poor impression of your company just as surely as a less-than-welcoming receptionist.

But a brand needs to reflect the nature of your organisation – not merely a designer’s whim. Some major companies have indulged in major brand name changes in order to appear ‘modern’ or ‘trendy’ only to provoke ridicule or annoyance.
Take for instance the loss-making Post Office’s decision a few years back to rebrand as Consignia. That exercise was abandoned just 15 months later. What was the cost of that exercise compared to the cost of keeping more rural post offices open?

PricewaterhouseCoopers rebranded its consulting arm as Monday:, presumably in an attempt to look trendy and with it. How long the name would have lasted before being changed (to Tuesday perhaps?) we shall never know as it disappeared when IBM acquired the division. Meanwhile Andersons successfully rebranded as Accenture which could have been fortunate due to the bad publicity at the time around their accountancy arm.

Rebranding should only be undertaken if the organisation is changing (or has changed), or if the current identity has never reflected the core values of the organisation. People, including the staff or members of an organisation, should experience the organisation for themselves and this experience should be reflected by the corporate identity. After all the corporate identity is a way of recognising the organisation and what it stands for.

Good, lasting corporate identities are developed as result of the designer fully understanding the ethos of the organisation, the values it represents, the promise it makes to its customers or members. The most important stage of the process involves the designer getting to know what really sets the organisation apart from its peers and then working with the client to create an identity that everyone is comfortable with.

Finally any rebranding needs to be ‘sold’ to the people it will effect – and particularly to the staff. The reasons for the change, the reasons for the choice of colour, typeface, symbol, the reason for any positioning statement need to be fully explained so that everyone in the organisation can buy in to the new identity. Only then will the value of rebranding be fully realised.

If you would like to discuss this further, please call or email Richard Rogers on 01483 301333 richard@thebrandmakers.co.uk