What is rebranding and why companies need it

What is rebranding

A brand is an established image of a company. Everything works for him: the name, logo, corporate colors, product lines, and so on. Accordingly, rebranding is a change in this image.

Do not confuse it with a redesign or restyling. In the first case, we are talking about changing the corporate identity of the brand, in the second - the individual parts of this style. Rebranding is a more global transformation than developing a new logo or moving icons on the site. It affects the image of the company, its concept, positioning.

Why do companies need to rebrand

This is best told by the business representatives themselves.

Bring the image of the company in line with the new philosophy

My first business was related to photo reports from clubs, bars and restaurants. Then my partner and part-time wife Alisa Kudrya joined me. With her, we began to engage in services in the field of events and wedding video.

I made the decision to rebrand when I realized that the DESPERADO name didn't fit. family business. The tender and artistic shots that we shot did not fit in with such a name. We decided to create a new brand associated with our last name - Kudryastudio.

Now it is a family brand. The market perceives us differently. Creative people began to come: with good taste, with a good eye, with a desire to do interesting things. For example, we were offered to hold a wedding ceremony in an abandoned children's camp. At that time, it looked very unusual; this had never happened before in Moscow and, possibly, in Europe.

We have adjusted not only the appearance, but also the focus of our activities. Having raised the bar in the choice of clients, we ourselves did not expect how soon the environment in our company and among our customers would change. The work brought more and more pleasure and material satisfaction. The rebrand gave rise to "umbrella businesses" such as recording studios, website development, packaging and marketing.

To keep up with the times

The communication agency Spice Media was established in 2012 and specialized in PR support in the media and organization of business events. However, since then the list of services has expanded significantly, and the pool of clients has changed. Today we are engaged in strategic communications planning, PR support, media relations, influencer marketing, online reputation management, SMM, anti-crisis PR.

We are known as good PR people because we started as a classic PR agency. We wanted to show that we can do much more, that we have long gone beyond our basic expertise. In addition, when the company was created, the business was just beginning to look at social networks and digital activities. Now everything has changed, and the main tasks of the agency for clients are implemented online.

Therefore, at some point it became clear that the time had come for change. The old logo was morally outdated and no longer corresponded to modern visual trends. The corporate website and social media accounts looked a bit old-school. Many applicants who came to the agency for interview, paid attention to this and said that our corporate identity was unfashionable. It became obvious that our visual representation in the information space has a negative impact, at least, on the image of the agency as an employer.

The new identity reflects brightness, dynamism and willingness to experiment, as well as adaptability to the client's tasks. The letter i in the logo is presented in the form of an exclamation mark - a symbol of loudness, sensationalism - the qualities that PR projects should have. At the same time, it is an inverted pepperbox, and a pinch of spices is an ingredient of brightness, with which Spice Media adds sonority and richness to its projects. This element is the basis of the logo's variability, demonstrating openness to change.

The changes affected not only the corporate style, but also the entire communication system. Our slogan has always been "Spice up your business bright communications”, but the old corporate identity did not fully convey this message. Therefore, it was practically not read, especially by those who had never dealt with us. Now our task is to convey this through our communication policy. Anyone who comes into contact with us should understand that we are not only professionals, but also bright, dynamic specialists, ready to experiment in order to achieve the client's tasks.

We carried out the rebranding in 2021, so it is too early to draw any conclusions, especially in quantitative terms. One thing is for sure, today we are constantly receiving positive feedback about our corporate identity and new website from both young professionals and potential clients.

Expand target audience

COFFEE LIKE has been on the market since 2013. This is a network of coffee shops and coffee bars in the coffee to go format. In 2018, the owners changed, after which rebranding began, which includes changing business processes, communication models of the management company, franchisee and employees, appearance of bars, corporate identity. We continue to work on these areas now.

It was important for us to build up from the image of the company for young people who lived under the slogan "Do what you like." In September 2018, the network was represented in 131 cities, 408 coffee bars were operating. Therefore, we wanted to show that we are the largest player in the market, but at the same time remain equally accessible to customers. This message needed to be conveyed not only to guests, but also to an internal audience of almost three thousand people: employees of the management company, partners and baristas who work for us. Partners had to understand that our business is not a “tiny single coffee bar”, but a large federal chain with its own standards, unique offers and a single positioning.

The complexity of rebranding is the need to make changes so as not to cause backlash from regular guests, as they are used to the image of the company, which has never changed before. One of the first signs was the introduction of a new menu and design of interiors and facades. Our color palette now includes 22 colors instead of the two main ones, which are easily combined with each other, creating atypical, but harmonious and memorable combinations. This is important for interiors, communications, menus, mobile applications - all elements should be perceived as a whole and create a seamless interaction experience.

Also one of the innovations was the creation of a modular interior system. The peculiarity of this concept is that it is easy to assemble an outlet, as constructor, and just as easy to dismantle it and transport it to another place. This also applies to interior decoration. For example, if necessary, you can add a point with a local promotion, print advertising or a new offer in just a few minutes.

The financial results also speak of the successful implementation of the rebranding: in 2018, the network earned only 1.2 billion rubles, in 2019 - already 2.3 billion. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, the chain's revenue grew to 2.5 billion, in 2021 to 3.2 billion. In three years, the number of bars doubled to 875. The process is not yet complete: we continue to implement changes.

Scale business

The history of Umalat began 18 years ago with a small plant in the Bryansk region. Over the years, we have built an ecosystem of food brands and digital projects that help shape the culture of cheese consumption and take care of your health. The task is to show food not just as a way to replenish energy, but as part of a lifestyle. This philosophy resonates with millions of Russians, especially millennials and the younger Generation Z. For example, the Sochetaizer culinary project and the mobile exercise app yoga YogaClub attracted the attention of more than 170 million people. At a certain moment, the realization came that the name Umalat had become cramped and no longer reflected the branding culture of the company.

Rebranding always worries entrepreneurs when there is a successful business behind them, well-established production and logistics processes. There is a chance to cease to be recognizable and lose the level of loyalty. On the other hand, the fragmentation of the company name with its philosophy cannot lead to the desired progress. Renaming Umalat to Unagrande Company is one of the stages of business scaling. We have moved from the image of a local grocery manufacturer to a world-class lifestyle company. The brand change allowed us to enter new markets, while we did not lose touch with a permanent audience.

Before carrying out rebranding, it is necessary to assess all factors and risks, think over a plan in advance to minimize them, and prepare partners and end users for a new sound. It is important that this step leads to an increase in the status of corporate and product brands, and not vice versa.

Register a trademark

In 2008, when we were still called Perfect Design, I found out that there was another similar firm in another city. Then we decided to change our name. At that time, directories were relevant and the ranking in them was from A to Z. Therefore, we chose a name with two A - "aAccent". After a few years, reference books fell out of favor, but we haven't thought about registering a trademark yet. There was a brand, a nice logo - and they worked.

The company developed and became quite famous. A lot of feedback has accumulated as an employer and as a contractor. When we took a good market share in the region and entered Russia, we thought about trademark registrationto make it impossible to make a second such company. I sent a request to check the name "aAccent", and it turned out that in another city such a company was already registered in the advertising field. Although we had a slightly different word, the meaning was the same.

It was unclear what to do. On the one hand, we are known, there are many positive reviews - and therefore we could not use a fundamentally different name. We wanted to keep the consonance to be associated with the old version, but at the same time we needed registration. All of our options assumed that the main word was "accent", regardless of the number of letters "a" at the beginning, various modifications and additional words. Then the specialist suggested that we change the meaning, and the name “Focus on Results” was born. We have applied for registration and are currently in the process of registration.

For the logo, we left the “A” symbol in a circle, but changed the color scheme and updated the design, making it lighter. In all informational materials, on the pages, we write the new name and the old one in brackets. This is necessary so that applicants and potential clients understand that if not reviews to "Emphasis on results", then you need to look for them under the old name. Thus, when rebranding, we will not lose a social resource. We are restarting marketing materials, and for offline products it costs us approximately 250-300 thousand rubles. Our goal was to register a trademark and keep the image of the old name.

Replace the concept with a more efficient one

I was engaged in rebranding in the wholesale company "Vostochny Put" as a marketer. Initially, her mission and purpose were vague. The organization has several brands, and they have several product lines. The products in the series were with different labels, we changed the colors of the logo for packaging. In the end, it played against us. Each series looked like a separate brand. The company could not be remembered by customers in any way, to earn their trust, loyalty.

As a result, we settled on two brands, removed a series of products. We wrote down the mission and goal, developed slogans and selected the appropriate packaging. After the rebranding, trademarks became clear and conveyed our positioning.

For the first one, we chose a laconic, strict and premium packaging design. The products were only made from natural materials, from expensive and hardwoods: tropical acacia, hevea. We were the exclusive distributors of such dishes. The second brand was aimed at the mass buyer. These are practical and functional products for the kitchen with a red and white label. Red is also often associated with affordable prices.

Rebranding helped us put things in order, make the right positioning. We have become clearer and faster in communicating our offer to customers.

What else can rebranding help with?

There are other reasons to bring something fresh to the company's image:

• Get on the agenda. The world and society are changing. And what was normal yesterday is not always welcome today. And new ones are growing consumers with other values. Therefore, brands have to keep their finger on the pulse so as not to scare away customers.
• Reflect restructuring. It can be both internal changes and the merger of several brands. The bottom line is that the company is no longer the same, which means that it is positioning itself in a new way.
• Get away from bad concept. It is not always possible for a businessman to take into account all the nuances of development when creating a company. Sometimes the visual design is frankly unsuccessful, and the name was invented hastily. It's just that no one imagined that everything would go so far. However, it is not necessary to stay with the old image forever.
• Stay away from scandal. If the company is involved in something unpleasant and anti-crisis PR does not help, you can rebrand. And some part of the audience will perceive the organization as completely new, with an unspoiled reputation.
• Attract attention. Rebranding will at least be noticed by the professional community, and if you're lucky, then the media.