Rebranding: The Plans

Check this out! I created a very short, video version of this blog post on our Content Sparks rebranding process using a fun tool that speeds up the repurposing:

The tool is called Lumen5 and you should take a look.

And now, back to our rebranding story series…

 This is the third installment in our story about the rebranding of our business. Check out parts One and Two.

Rebranding is an involved, complicated, sometimes overwhelming process

– and we knew that overwhelm could derail everything if we were not on top of what needed to be done, who needed to do it, and by when.

The first stage involved a significant amount of brainstorming and research. We wanted to answer questions like:

• What are our goals?
• Who are our existing customers?
• What should our target markets be?
• Who are our competitors? (not a simple question, actually)
• Why should prospects buy our products?
• What are we known for now?
• What do we want to be known for in the future?
• How do we/should we communicate with our customers?
• How do we/should we communicate with our prospective buyers?
• Where is our current branding working?
• Where do we need to improve our branding and why?

We used Skype for weekly voice meetings, and also for almost daily communication of thoughts and ideas as they occurred to us. It quickly became clear that we needed a way to collect all the brainstorming ideas and research in one place, and the obvious solution for that was to open a shared Evernote notebook.

Each time we discussed a new topic, no matter how small, we opened a new note in our Evernote notebook, making sure that any headings were clear and descriptive.

Each person added to the notes in a different color so we could immediately see what each of us was thinking. That’s a small detail, yes, but it made it so much easier to follow discussions and changes.

By the end of the rebranding process we had 36 separate, incredibly detailed notes on everything from rebranding plans to video scripts, business cards, color schemes, competitors, customer surveys, our value proposition, market research, and much more.

After the brainstorming and research stage, we started to move forward with all the marketing collateral and content we needed to create. That included the logo, new content sections for the website, social media profiles, business cards, free content for opting in to our list etc.

All the content went through several drafts and revisions.

During this stage we were using Dropbox extensively to note changes and to collaborate on texts and visuals.

Once we were approaching the launch date, we added another tool to help us manage the enormous mountain of details that we needed to track and implement. Asana was essential in helping us maintain order and not lose sight of the smallest checklist items.

Great communication was key to planning and implementing the rebranding project. With team members and our rebranding consultant based in different countries, in different time-zones, we needed to keep a tight hold on what we were discussing, what had been decided, and how we were moving forward. Using Skype, Evernote, Dropbox and Asana made the whole process flow beautifully.

In tomorrow’s post we’ll share some of the specific thinking that went into choosing our new name, and how that influenced the rest of the rebranding process.