Aug 12, 2011 Managing brand equity involves reinforcing brands or, if necessary, revitalizing brands.Brand equity is reinforced by marketing actions that consistently convey the meaning of the brand to consumers in terms of: 1) What products the brand represents; what core benefits it supplies; and what needs it satisfies; and 2) How the brand makes those products superior and which strong, favorable,. 4) Launch Your Rebrand Internally First. An internal launch can be considered a soft launch. It’s the best way to get everyone on board, work out any kinks, and bring the whole team into the brand story so that they can best represent the brand. A few ways to do that: Launch 4-6 weeks before the public launch.
Recently, Yahoo snagged some headlines by updating their iconic logo. The company launched a marketing campaign around the logo redesign where they posted a different logo on the site every day leading up to the final iteration. While Yahoo’s revised logo ultimately received mixed reviews, it has opened up the conversation about the value of logo redesigns for brands.
At eleventy, many organizations we work with ask the same trifecta of questions when it comes to their logos: Why should I update my logo? When should I update my logo? How should I update my logo? In today’s blog, we’ll help provide some answers to these essential logo questions.
WHY: Key Benefits of a Strong Brand Logo
A quick glance at your logo can give an individual the impression your organization is modern and professional or outdated and amateur. Here are three benefits of a well-thought-out and effective logo:
It reflects your brand identity
A strong logo gives people a sense of what you do and who you do it for. Obviously, a single image can’t say it all. But in subtle and even subconscious ways, it can say a lot. Think of Nike’s swoosh as an example. The swoosh logo creates the impression of motion and speed. It also has meaning: It represents the wings of Nike, the Greek goddess that symbolized victory.
It establishes a sense of trust
A simple, polished logo creates trust between individuals and your organization. Viewing a visually appealing logo legitimizes your organization in people’s mind. A strong presentation leads to a strong perception. On the flip side, a poorly crafted logo creates skepticism and distrust of your organization. Think about the bad logos you’ve seen—how did it make you feel about the organization?
It helps you stand out from the crowd
A recognizable logo is a way to stand out. It’s an opportunity to seed your brand in the brains of consumers. The more people who know and remember your logo, the more established your brand becomes. Think about the truly iconic logos—Apple, Coca-Cola, BMW—and how ingrained those brands are in our culture. They all have a huge marketing advantage over the competition.
WHEN: Signs It’s Time for a Logo Redesign
So how do you know when it’s time to redesign your logo? Here are a few key indicators your logo needs a revival:
It makes people think they traveled back in time
Think about visiting a website designed a decade ago. Or a house decorated in the 1980s. You can easily tell it’s dated. Trends and tastes change, and that can affect perceptions of your logo. What was once modern and compelling can lose it’s power over time. When people see a logo that looks outdated, they perceive an organization as out-of-touch with modern best practices. A good rule of thumb is to at least consider updating your logo once every five years.
It doesn’t represent your evolution
Nonprofits and businesses evolve. They have to in order to survive. You grow your organization based on opportunities and strengths. That means you may not be the same business as when you started. Or your nonprofit may have honed in on what was once a small part of your mission. As a result, your logo no longer accurately reflects what you do and who you do it for. If that’s the case, your logo may not be “you” anymore and its time to bring it back in line with your organization.
It’s not in synch with your rebranding
Maybe your business hasn’t changed but how you present it to the world has through a rebranding or repositioning effort. Whenever you undertake a rebranding, you should make sure updating your logo is part of your effort. Your logo is a brand reflection and you always want them to be on the same page. Even if you still like your logo, it’s a good idea to give it a polish as part of your overall rebranding effort.
HOW: Tips for Maintaining an Effective Logo
When you decide it’s time to do some work on your logo, here are a handful of tips for getting it right—and keeping it right:
Make it simple
Since your logo is a singular visual representing the entirety of your nonprofit or business, your initial temptation will be to pile every aspect of your organization into the tiny image. Resist that temptation! Think about the logos for Target or Google or MTV. They’re all simple, but they incorporate ideas and design elements that reflect the purpose of the organization. The best logos find ways to say a lot with very little—a font, the use of lines and shapes, or the choice of color (or lack thereof). The simplest logos tend to be the most long-lasting and iconic.
Test it outside
You know your organization. You know what you do and who you do it for. You are biased. Sure, everyone can have an opinion. But your opinion of your logo is skewed. It’s always a good idea when redesigning to get opinions of your current logo and any potential new logos from people who have no idea who you are. Find out whether they react positively to the logo, how it makes them feel and what it makes them think about the organization.
Assess it and refresh it
Yahoo got a lot of heat because their new logo looks similar to the old one. But that’s really the purpose of a refresh. In most cases, like Yahoo’s, you’re not trying to change entirely—but simply breathe new life into the logo. Make it look like it exists “in the now”. To that end, it’s a good idea to regularly assess your logo to see if it still holds up. Does it show any of the three signs listed above? If so, don’t be afraid to make some adjustments (look how Starbucks regularly evolves their logo).
An Important Piece of the Marketing Puzzle
Just like your website, your logo creates an immediate impression. Within seconds of viewing, it gives people a perception of your business or nonprofit that can be tough to shake. A logo is not the end-all be-all of your organization, but, like all marketing efforts, it certainly makes a difference. It’s an important piece of the marketing puzzle.
There’s no definitive time when you should redesign your logo. But you can probably take a hard look at your logo and intuition will tell you if it’s time for an update. If you look at your logo and it just doesn’t represent who you are as an organization—today, at this very moment—you might want to think about making some changes.
Having a strong image that represents your brand that people can easily visualize when someone mentions your company name certainly won’t hurt your business. On the other hand, having a generic or dusty logo that turns off potential leads just might.
In this blog our guest contributors - Richard Amos and Mike Wilkinson from Royce Communications - share their top 10 tips for creating and maintaining a successful brand.
Richard and Mike have kindly contributed to our free eBook, Brand and Corporate Identity for Small to Mid-Sized Businesses.
What are the first steps in creating my brand?
Comments by Richard Amos and Mike Wilkinson
Royce Communications
As mentioned previously, your brand identity is determined by your business plan, so before you get down to the nuts and bolts of adopting a brand strategy, ensure it is aligned to your business goals.
We recommend clients have a very clear strategy around their brand, the basis of which is the ‘Brand Plan’.
The 3 Ps of a Brand Plan
- Purpose – Ask yourself for your what is the underlying purpose of the brand? What are the brand values? What are the value propositions around that?
- Potential – This is a reality check about our ability to achieve our aims for the brand. For example, we have aspirations of being number one in our category, but that will take a lot of time and money we don’t have. Instead, let’s try to carve out a niche for ourselves and position ourselves as the alternate to the more mature market brands.
- Promise – What is the promise to the end user and how do we achieve it? How do we make the brand purpose a reality, in light of the identified potential?
The Brand Plan fits very snugly with the business strategy and other functional business plans.
It is the organising system for how we tell our story, how we present our brand, what images we choose over others and whether we decide to engage with customers face to face or via remote service delivery, or whether we interact via Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube or any other digital channel.
Adopting the Brand Plan
The Brand Plan also becomes the organising system for how we develop, deliver and manage the brand going forward.
We’ve created the following 10 steps to establish and maintain a successful brand identity based on the 3 Ps of the Brand Plan.
For a smaller organisation that doesn’t have a lot of resources, simply talking through these headings with your management team, or methodically answering the questions they raise as a business owner or manager, CEO or MD, can be enough to provide clarity and alignment within the business.
Then, if you have the budget to invest, the more time you spend at each step, the more you will learn and know, and the more you will de-risk your brand strategy.
10 top tips for establishing and maintaining a successful brand identity
1. Be very clear on the organisation’s goals, ambitions and capabilities
6 Ways To Refresh Your Brand And Maintain An Identity Agent
The basic discussion should be:
- What do you want to be and are you really that now?
- If you aren’t that yet, how do you become that?
- If you are that, how do you get the message out to your customers?
It’s about really understanding the business’ current situation, where it wants to be and what it can achieve.
The brand must be aligned with these goals and capabilities.
2. Understand the customer and what drives purchasing in your category and in the segment you are targeting
Get in and understand your customer. If you don’t have the time and money available to actually survey the audience as to what they need and want, then talk to your sales director, talk to the person who sells on the floor, talk to the mechanics who deal with the customers, but get to know what the customer needs.
If you can’t go direct to the customer then get a proxy for that, because customers should be at the centre of all of your thinking about brand.
3. Be ruthless in assessing what you really are in this context, noting the good and the bad
So, we have our aspirational view of what the brand wants to achieve, but where are our gaps and what are the issues in relation to delivering that?
4. Review the market and make sure you understand who could take the customer’s cash instead of you
Every time you’re out there with a brand message, it needs to be competitive.
It is very, very rare in today’s markets that you are the monopoly provider of anything, so your message has to cut through competitively.
That’s not just saying ‘we are better than…’ but you have to provide some value to the customer in the context of what other people are promoting to get that customer’s money.
Understand how competitors are pitching their products and services and find a spot that you can own that’s going to be profitable.
For example, if someone else is the cheapest, be the most premium. If everyone in the market is the most premium, then be the most service-oriented.
Find something that differentiates you and your brand – your point of difference.
5. Once you have found an area you want to target as a brand, create a narrative that makes sense
Your story needs to have a whole lot of aspects starting with the promise – what is the essence of your brand?
But there are also other attributes, i.e. what are the facts behind your promise that make it believable? For example, many companies will use their heritage or time in business to prove their promise that they are a stable organisation to deal with.
So, find things that not only state the claim beautifully, but which also reinforce it and rationally support it. Then wrap around that a set of personality traits and values that align with your specific customer.
Create a story (proposition, values, personality) for your brand that is different to the rest and that is compelling to, and connects with, the customer.
6. Time for a reality check
You have the story you want to take to market, so now you must go through it and ensure you will be able to deliver it on every level.
Interrogate it to understand what it would take to consistently deliver the promise of that story.
For example, if you are positioning yourself as having the highest levels of service, are your staff trained well enough? Do your stores have the right ambience? Make sure you can deliver all those little things that add up to a customer experience that is critical in their evaluation of your brand.
You must be ruthless in evaluating whether you can deliver. It’s not about making a promise, it’s about living the promise.
7. Make sure operations can support delivery of the story
- Reinforce things that support your story
- Jettison those that don’t
- Bring in aspects that are missing
8. It’s not just about the product
Bring the brand story to life in everything you do:
- The product/service
- Price and packaging
- Your people
- Your stores or distribution methods
- Your communications
9. Be in it and be present
Treat your brand identity like a living, organic thing that must be sustained and nurtured.
This advice has become even more important in the digital age because people have a multiplier effect through social media and can engage with you so easily. They can collaborate with you in building huge groups of adopters, or lobby groups against you.
You need to be vigilant and be in there, monitoring your own story, seeing how people respond to it and being ready to come back in and actively respond to any issues or multiply the good things.
We very much encourage our clients to be involved in social media, to have a content plan and be active in getting their story out there.
But that comes with the responsibility of being regularly involved in monitoring the story across social media channels. Be alert and police it, quickly addressing inconsistencies.
6 Ways To Refresh Your Brand And Maintain An Identity Theft
10. Don’t try to be all things to all people – the best, most successful brands intimately understand and target a distinct audience, thus do not appeal to everyone
Have a position and stand for something – be willing to accept that having a strong brand sometimes means people won’t like your product.
The most successful brands tend to have a group that is as equally against it, as its customers are for it. Apple is probably the best example.
6 Ways To Refresh Your Brand And Maintain An Identity Number
In our next blog Richard and Mike will discuss the challenges of managing your brand in a digital world, and share advice on how to 'lead' your brand message in this new operating environment.
6 Ways To Refresh Your Brand And Maintain An Identity Theft
Disclaimer: Please remember the information contained in this blog is general in nature and should not be taken as personal, professional advice. Readers should make their own inquiries and obtain independent advice before making any decisions or taking any action.
James Price is Managing Director of JPAbusiness Pty Ltd, a specialist business advisory, valuation and business broking firm servicing clients
throughout Australia and overseas.
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