What We Write About.

As dis­cussed in today’s Inside Indi­ana Busi­ness guest edi­to­r­ial piece, rebrand­ing isn’t a new con­cept. In fact, mar­keters will tune in this month for the lat­est sea­son of Mad Men, a tele­vi­sion series that depicts brand­ing dilem­mas of the six­ties. Times have changed, but the impor­tance of mon­i­tor­ing “the brand” has not. So, how do keep your brand rel­e­vant? And, how do you know if it’s time to rebrand?

Know­ing when to refresh your brand isn’t an exact sci­ence. How­ever, there are a hand­ful of fac­tors to guide your rebrand­ing deci­sion. Let’s take a closer look at five com­mon cat­a­lysts for a new brand.

1. Chang­ing of the guard
Brands are com­monly linked to a company’s leader, par­tic­u­larly in pri­vately held orga­ni­za­tions where the brand embod­ies a founder’s per­son­al­ity. This is mag­ni­fied with the rise in Baby Boomers fac­ing suc­ces­sion plan­ning. This gen­er­a­tional shift is usu­ally about more than the brand; it also affects change in oper­a­tions, human resources and tech­nol­ogy. A new iden­tity is one way to accom­mo­date the transition.

2. Spring clean­ing
What can we learn from the world’s largest brands? For starters, the likes of Star­bucks, JC Pen­ney and the Asso­ci­ated Press seize oppor­tu­ni­ties to refresh their iden­tity. Regard­less of com­pany size, it’s chal­leng­ing to stay con­tem­po­rary and fresh. Admit­tedly, this can be an objec­tive exer­cise; there’s no rule for how long a brand remains cur­rent. When a com­plete rebrand is imprac­ti­cal, a com­mon tac­tic is to “up-brand” or refresh the company’s iden­tity. Reju­ve­nat­ing the basic ele­ments — such as col­ors, type­face, or logo treat­ment – can honor your past and embrace the future.

3. M&A activ­i­ties
There’s a local uptick in con­sol­i­da­tion activ­i­ties (most notably in bank­ing and pro­fes­sional ser­vices). When two become one, what hap­pens to the legacy brands? It’s an easy answer when the acquirer’s brand gen­er­ally lives to fight another day. How­ever, an acqui­si­tion often marks the time to eval­u­ate any over­laps in audi­ences, prod­uct set, or geog­ra­phy. Merg­ers are a dif­fer­ent ani­mal; they can pre­cip­i­tate an entirely new brand, or at min­i­mum, a “touch up” to the mes­sage and visual identity.

4. Search­ing for rel­e­vance
Things change … includ­ing your cus­tomers. As con­sumer behav­ior evolves, so should your brand. With an ever-expanding choice for your audi­ence, it’s para­mount to stay rel­e­vant. Today’s speed of busi­ness breeds changes in the very things that are impor­tant to a tar­get audi­ence (e.g., tech­nol­ogy, pric­ing, con­ve­nience fac­tor, etc.). A proac­tive, new brand is more effi­cient than fight­ing for client reten­tion once your audi­ence has switched.

5. It’s not you. It’s me.
“Repo­si­tion­ing” a brand is more than aca­d­e­mic the­ory. As a com­pany grows, its brand can change and stand for some­thing dif­fer­ent from its hum­ble begin­nings. Brands advance to reach new audi­ences; the chal­lenge is to intro­duce a posi­tion that res­onates and con­nects with them. As a com­pany grows in sophis­ti­ca­tion, the ini­tial home­grown iden­tity can become a liability.

In sum­mary, your brand is an asset that should work for you. When your orga­ni­za­tion is fac­ing change, rebrand­ing isn’t a deci­sion to take lightly. After all, the only thing more expen­sive than a rebrand is an unnec­es­sary rebrand. Embrac­ing change and rec­og­niz­ing the need to evolve is the first step. From there, build­ing a last­ing brand requires a com­mit­ment to your cul­ture, clients and bot­tom line.