subject: Re-branding For A Contemporary Digital And Design Led World [print this page] Businesses re-brand for a number of reasonsBusinesses re-brand for a number of reasons. Sometimes it is that a businesses identity has become outdated, sometimes it can be because a business has changed or grown and wants to show how it has changed to the rest of the world. No matter what the reason, the most important thing when re-branding a company is to get it right.
Be creative and Imaginative.
The first thing you should do is hire a great creative design team capable of not only meeting your company's needs, but experts in taking your brand to another level. Don't be afraid of change, change can be good and will help re-invigorate a tired, ailing or outdated brand, but remember to keep the spirit of what your brand was alive in some part. The amount to which you may do this, will depend on whether you are under-taking a full or partial re-brand.
A partial re-brand involves giving the companies identity a refresh or update. This could include slight or moderate creative design changes to colours, styling, and brand feel.
A full re-brand involves significant changes to most, if not all elements that make up your brand, even as far as the business name.
With either of these approaches you will want to look at re-designing all your company brochures, promotional material, display graphics, stationary and developing a new website.
Be Distinctive.
Make sure your new brand identity is both fresh, distinctive and attractive. Your logo and branding should meet contemporary design standards to make sure it is both appealing to your existing and potential customer base as well as versatile enough to meet modern demands. Use colours, styling, fonts and imagery that suit your market place, but give them a personal and imaginative twist with the help of your creative design team.
Think outside the box.
Throughout the re-branding process make sure you consult and take on board ideas from across your team, including company stake-holders and your top employees. If you are using an efficient and professional digital design, web and graphics agency as we suggest, they should be able to offer easy collaboration solutions via a trusted project management system and work flow.
Get your online web identity in shape.
Even in this age of digital innovation, some companies treat their websites and online presence as an after thought in any re-branding process. This is one of the biggest mistakes any one business can make. With the growing digital economy and with more and more people choosing the internet as their first port of call to find and determine which services, products or assets they will use or acquire, no business can afford to leave their online presence to chance.
We recommend that anyone looking to re-brand their company or start up a new one treat their website design and development as a priority. When employing your design team, you should make sure they have a proficient and capable web development team behind them.
Your new website should comply with web standards for greater search engine visibility and accessibility standards, so not only people with disabilities can access the site, but also people using any type of web browser. The website should be easy to use and navigate and offer rich functionality using a standards compliant content management system, e-commerce or blogging platform. Your development team should be able to provide you with both "Off the shelf" solutions and bespoke web development where required. See if your web design agency can also offer SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) services and copy-writing to make sure your websites text is primed with keywords to help you attract the top hits within search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing.
Make sure your website is hosted using a suitable hosting platform that provides optimal performance for both yourselves and your customers. The type of hosting you require will depend on a number of factors including storage capacity, bandwidth allowance, acceptable use policies and other important considerations such as email services and backing up of your data.
Another thing to consider is creating and sending out a regular HTML email newsletter campaign, to your pre-existing customer base. This way you can regularly keep them informed as to any new products or services you are offering or general developments in and around the company.
