Re-branding is a difficult decision. It involves lot of time, effort and money. That is why it need not be an instant decision, one need to spend good time, assess, and revisit the decision before bidding adieu to the existing brand.

Choosing to re-brand should also come with the confidence of sticking to your offering and making its image, its communication and its message more relevant, consumer friendly and appealing. All this is not possible without a proper research and analysis of the existing brand, the message it conveys and how differently are these perceived. Competitive brands, alternate brands can also be a reason to re-brand.

A correct positioning of the brand is a promise of long term sustenance and growth. An established brand can further lead to premium pricing with the right positioning.

This is Post 4 in the series.

Here are some of the most obvious & popular reasons for Re-Branding:

Expansion / Outgrowth

Growth from a smaller venture to a bigger organization, growth in terms of capacity, employees, franchising, expansion etc is good enough reasons for a re-branding.  At the beginning the brands start small in capacity, confidence and hence budgets. Some even start with the logo only and rest of the brand is managed at the printer end only. When they grow- they want to re-establish the brand with an image which reflects its values and its experience.

Currently, we are working on the re-branding of an organization with annual turnover of 1 Billion. They reached here and wanted to diversify their business in an organized way. We suggested them Umbrella Branding as now we are creating the entire group’s identity. With growth, it becomes inevitable.

Relevance meets Truth

Sometimes, the brand becomes old fashioned, the new players overlap the identity, the technological advancements, the lifestyle changes lead to obsolete brand images and therefore the brands feel irrelevant in the market situations and in the insight of consumers. That is where the brands come to know about the truth of their old age branding and choose to Re-brand.

One of the example is, revival of age old brands like ‘Rajnigandha’ – the positioning has changed and that is why the endorsers.  All this because they want to stay relevant to the target market and that is why they evolve as the market evolves. A decision of re-brand usually comes as result of segmentation and by developing customer insights.

M & A and Demergers

When two different entities join each other for creating a more beneficial & stronger business entity, they need a reinforced and stronger Brand identity too, hence leading to a re-brand. It is also significant for communicating the new image and the new brand message, the very purpose of merger & acquisition and to win the trust of consumers.  Sometimes, it is also done to emerge as a single stronger identity when the marketer wants to kill the previous 2 existing brand and establish the third one as the brand both the merging companies would like to associate with.  One example of re-branding as a result of a demerger is ‘Hero Motocorp.’ when Honda decided to move out of the then ruling brand Hero Honda.

Changing Brand Services/ Brand Evolvement

Most of the businesses begin with one or may be two things in mind, a simple or may be varied set of services and they run to survive. With time, when they survive, they run further to evolve and that is when the management reaches to a conclusion, as to what they would actually like to do under the Brand name or they are confident enough that they want to do concentrate or may be add up to the portfolio and that is exactly why they need to Re-Brand themselves.

The closest example that comes to my mind is my own brand. We took three years to decide on what we should be all about and we re-launched certainly as a better, clear and more confident entity. Many start-ups come through this phase and even the biggest brand evolve and innovate and keep presenting to you – the new revived brands. Remember, last year when Microsoft launched the new logo.

Technology & Innovation

Technology is one reason that keeps all the brands on toes. The consumer is everyday looking for new & better products, services and eventually brands. You need to not just reach out but you need to connect to the consumers in the right way.

Be it your identity, your web presence or your social media accounts – consumer is demanding. They want to see you up to date and that is the reason why innovation leads to many re-brands.

Globalization

Many brands felt the need of re-branding when they decided to adopt global strategy.  What may be working great in your local market doesn’t necessarily have to be appealing in the global markets. Creating new brand for new markets often leads to identity crisis and even affects the credibility and that is why it is considered a prudent decision – to rebrand into a single global entity.

Also with the social media gaining a lot of brand space, everybody wants to capture maximum consumer mind space which is only possible of the identity remains same and thereby allows firm brand recall.

Internal Branding

Many a times, it is observed that an all round Internal Branding exercise leads to a decision of re-branding. The reasons here could be multiple – business strategy change, new team and hence new preferences, some disagreement in the mindsets and brand perceptions of the stakeholders etc are the reasons which induce the very thoughts of re-branding/ a re-launch or even a positioning change.

These are reasons, why most of the Brands choose to Re-brand. But like we said it is a decision of precision and shall not be taken in haste. There are reasons why a Brand should choose against Re-branding or re-launch.

When you are a young brand, you should choose, Not to Re-brand.

There may be feedback, reviews against your ideology and logic. Some may find a flaw in your design or the brand colors. Some will just say it out of their personal choice. These are not reasons enough to re-brand. You are still in establishing phase, we can say we are testing the idea and checking the response. So the idea is to check the business sustainability before moving on to brand/re-brand.

Go live the brand, like you live a dream.