Rebranding: First Steps

 This is the second installment in our story about the rebranding of our business. If you haven’t read about why we decided to rebrand an already successful business, read about it here.

Once we made the decision to move ahead with the rebranding of our business, we needed to decide on our first steps towards that goal. Rebranding is a complex process and getting it right is critical.

The first step was to decide the scope of the project. What should the rebranding project include?

At the very least we knew we needed a new name, a new logo, a new website design, and visuals and content which would tie our new marketing messages together. And yes, critically, we needed to work out what those marketing messages were going to be.

Our new marketing messages would inform the entire rebranding process.

The next step was figuring out who needed to be involved in the rebranding project.

What resources did we already have access to, and what should we bring in from outside?

We already had a strong team, but it became clear early on that a key element was missing from the lineup. We needed a branding/rebranding expert to guide the project and provide insight and direction.

While we had a significant amount of business experience ourselves, no matter how much you already know, it’s sometimes difficult to apply that knowledge to your own situation. That’s why we decided to bring another perspective on board, someone who could look at where we were, and where we were headed.

We selected someone who was not only a branding expert, but was also very familiar with our target markets.

As a bonus, she offered a global perspective too, which was useful since our target markets are international.

Her role was to guide us, asking tough questions, requiring well-founded answers, and offering creative solutions and critical input as the project progressed.

Once our new branding consultant came on board we began working on specifics.

We started with a series of discussions and planning sessions which would inform the rest of the process.

You can read more details about how exactly we approached the planning stage, and what tools we used to keep track of everything, in the next post.