Branding Facelifts: what to know (and what to avoid)
Every now and again we feel the need to go out and buy a brand new pair of shoes and maybe a new outfit to go along. Not that we immediately throw away everything we have at home, as we are surely going to continue to wear our older, more reliable pair of shoes. Sometimes business owners feel the same way when it comes to their branding. They go out and look for a new way to communicate their business ideas by using a whole new set of colors, fonts, or branding. The trouble with this is that there can be a disconnection between your business communications and your existing customer/client base. Could you imagine if ReMax changed all their colors to Hot Pink and Black, and instead of the hot air balloon they chose a convertible as the new symbol? If you are looking for a new look for your business graphics, you might consider updating your existing logo and pushing your branding style into a more modernly themed area.
The biggest benefit of updating your existing logo (as opposed to completely re-designing or changing the name of your business altogether) is 2 fold: It shows that your company is keeping up with times and at the same time allows your customers to still recognize your brand. You know graphic designers are always talking about branding identity and in much the way a corporation is legally considered to be its own entity, a brand is the personality of that entity. Personalities are always shifting in all of us, growing, maturing, and your brand should grow and mature with the times. If your branding hasn’t been updated since the early 1990’s, it is probably time to take a look at what your company is doing and think about what it could do better. However, it is important not to lose your company’s personality – grow but don’t completely change it.
Being up-to-date with your graphics is important in today’s marketplace. There seems to be an increasing amount of small businesses, even if we only seem to stumble across them on-line or while poking around Facebook. With so many options of suppliers of various goods and services, it is important that you make your business’ communications professional and up-to-date with your audience. If you are working in an industry such as hospitality and you are using loud energetic colors (like that of a fast food chain) instead of smooth, calming colors that say “Relax while you spend the night with us!” then you might be losing your audience to bigger name brands who are doing their communications better. Always research your audience before making any decisions about branding. As you start to build your audience, your branding needs to stay consistent. Then, as your audience gets bigger and bigger you can determine when it is time to give your branding a facelift to grow your audience even more. Although it is hard to say exactly when you should update your graphics, you probably want to stick with one branding effort for at least a year – a little refreshing is almost necessary about every 2-4 years, while a more dramatic re-brand you might consider once a decade. Although this time frame might work for some, it is important that you and your team plan and execute when to update your marketing efforts and how.
Below see some examples of how logos have been updated in a successful manner.
