How a Rebrand Rewards

Written by Alexander Jimenez

The great thing about a rebrand is you can almost treat your organization like a startup, only without the headaches and endless pain associated with being one.  

Rebranding your organization is a long, fun, complicated, rewarding, tiring process.  There is so much work that goes into the rebranding process—from identifying the need to creating an RFP, evaluating prospective partners to collaborating in the engagement, reviewing concepts to dozens of other tasks to make it successful and impactful.  This does not even take into account the hard work that goes into the implementation of the rebrand across your organization.  All this labor, thought, and strategy can take a toll on the positivity and momentum of you and your team.  

That’s why it’s important to keep the potential rewards of the rebrand front and center. Maintain the same excitement and joy that your team felt when you saw the first logo concepts—or the initial designs for your new website.  These future rewards cannot be all about hard metrics (revenue, growth, etc.), as important as those are.  They need to focus on the opportunity ahead and how the rebrand can drive change across every facet of the organization.  

The great thing about a rebrand is you can almost treat your organization like a startup, only without the headaches and endless pain associated with being one.  Everyone has a refined mission, evolved messaging, updated collateral and tools, and an endless stream of thrilling updates to share with their clients, members, and network.  Without having to look for a new job, they now work for a new organization.  Leverage that; make it fun.  Who can contact the most people and inform them of the “new us”?  Gamify it, reward it.  There does not need to be an immediate, tangible ROI to this either.  That will come if everybody embraces the new you.  Getting the team to adopt the rebrand rapidly will yield more benefits than you can imagine, both short and long term. 

Remember the times you or members of your team said, “I wish we could change that?”  “That” could be anything—from a simple work process to the digital background in your Zoom calls.  Well, a rebrand is change on a global scale.  There is nothing like rebooting your organization’s visual and storytelling presence to stimulate change across all facets of the organization.  From interacting with each other to interacting with clients and from how they deliver their work to how they speak at a staff meeting, everything is a candidate for evolution.  Now, be careful not to try and evolve everything at once, as it will be hard to maintain that level of effort.  However, anything and everything is fair game for evaluation.

Rebranding your organization should include rebranding your culture—because culture matters for success.  Unnecessary meetings that seemed to drag on?  Band-Aids thrown on antiquated ways of doing what you do?  Insufficient hierarchy where great ideas from staff may never be seen or heard?  All can and should be addressed during the process.  Reevaluate your meeting structure.  Set up times to simply talk about the rebrand, the innovations brought, the ideas realized, what the latest exciting change has led to.  And perhaps discuss more.  Do that often.  Measure success in the small wins—like maybe last week your rebranded newsletter went out and three people told you how amazing it was to see.  Those little wins will add up to huge successes.  

We’re not forgetting about the tangible ROI you wanted to see when a rebrand was first discussed.  That ROI should be tracked, measured, and shared regularly as well.  That said, those leading indicators are not the only story, and they alone will not keep the momentum of the organization at full throttle.  Mixing in the little things is what will drive the organization to new heights.  Those are what the team cares about because those are things they live and breathe every day.  Celebrate the new you, every bit of it!