You recently appointed a new marketing responsible. Discussions with the new appointee have been enthusiastic, questioning, and challenging. Most recently, the topic of a relaunch has become a dominant point of discussion. Your brand persona is well established, and everyone is comfortable with it. Is a brand relaunch a necessary and worthwhile task?
Is a brand relaunch important?
A brand relaunch is an important phase in any brand’s life.
You must keep your brand fresh and inviting. If you leave anything static for too long, it becomes stagnant and boring. Looking at it from the opposite perspective, too often change is made for change’s sake and that is takes your teams eyes off the ball.
So, it must always be undertaken at the right time, for the right reasons and with the right resources behind it.
Let us start at the beginning.
There must always be a fundamental business reason for a relaunch.
These reasons fall into two camps.
The first is the “unavoidable” camp. The relaunch cannot be avoided.
- You might be undergoing a regional, national, or even a global expansion and the brand design must be updated to fit multiple locations.
- Or you have undergone a merger or acquisition, and some brand design is necessary to make the new fit in.
- There may be a legal reason.
- Or it might be that an innovative product development is moving the brand in a new direction.
The second is the “try the alternatives first” camp. Think carefully before you start, particularly examine the reasons closely and first evaluate if there are other things you must do before you commence the relaunch. Some that fit this category include:
- The crisis management relaunch or “cover up relaunch”. Something has happened that does not benefit the brand so the business reason for change is to hide the crisis. Look at the situation honestly and deal with the it. Some design change might be necessary but keep that as simple as possible. You need your team to focus on the reason behind the crisis and make sure it does not reoccur.
- Competitive activity may indicate a brand relaunch. Again, evaluate that thoroughly. It might simply be that you sales team is over stating the competitive behaviour and the loss of sales they describe to competitive behaviour is in fact due to their own shortfalls.
- It may well be that the brand is stagnating, and it has been a long time since you have done anything new. But again, it may be that your new relaunch activity is not what you customers are looking for.
- Carefully evaluate what it is that will make the brand stand apart. It may simply be your customers are looking for some new services from the support staff, some new promotional drive from the marketing strategy or it may simply be the market is changing and your established position is losing out.
The key question here; is are there not cheaper, quicker, simpler actions you can take to exploit the opportunity? Look for where you can take the short road and fix the real problem.
Conduct a brand audit.
The first important step is to conduct a brand audit. That can be completed using internal or external resources. Be warned though. Using internal resources can be cost effective but too often that will only tell you what you are looking to hear. You must hear what your customers are saying, in their own words, good, bad, and ugly. A professional brand audit will reveal the hard truths but the important ones that you must deal with. A good compromise is a combination. That will mean an audit designed, led, and analysed by professionals but using your team to gather the data. That can have the advantage of achieving early buy in from your own team. That will be important if changes materialise out of the audit.
The brand audit is a first reflection of the resources that might be required to complete the relaunch. By resource we are talking about people, time, and money. You must commit sufficient resource to ensure the job is properly completed.
Keep an eye on the big picture.
It is critical in today’s age to ensure all activities and communications are integrated. Give as much attention to the training programs and the service culture as you do to the new advertising campaigns. And that every component of the communication receives support. From logo updates to business cards and letterheads, company vehicle livery, staff clothing and uniforms, packaging, display and brochures and the advertising campaigns, both traditional and social. Everything must speak with one integrated voice.
Resource the relaunch adequately.
That does require people, and you may need to add to your team or outsource additional expert staff, it requires time, and will distract your core people from their main function. Recognise that, allow for it. Plan around it. And it will require finance.
A good process is always to appoint one person to the task, more often that is a marketing responsible. Remember where this discussion started? Task him first to give you the big picture. Make sure that it is complete. Task the responsible to resource it. Time, people, and money. One challenge you can give him is to ask how they will improve things if given 10% or 20% additional resource (that will bring smiles and many exciting additions) or how they will achieve the same objective if resource is reduced by 10% or 20% (and that usually brings frown and glum looks.)
And make sure that the responsible delivers an integrated plan. It should have an integrated attitude to delivery, often starting with the company vision, logo and colours all the way down to the way visitors are met at reception.
Every component is critically important.
Nothing is excluded and it is all critically important.
From the colours on and in the company buildings, to the logos that adorn the walls, to the vehicle livery, the driver behaviour when on the road and the behaviour of the logistics team in a customer delivery area, to the style and delivery of training program, both to staff and customer alike, to staff benefits, rewards and remuneration and last but not least to advertising and communications. Business cards and stationery, packaging, brochures, posters and displays, website, social portals and content, traditional advertising whether that is print, outdoor, mall hoardings, radio or television. Everything must be integrated into a singular message.
Build a comprehensive strategy!
Turn every discussion into a written document. And compile those individual discussion into a detailed project plan, with times, budgets and resource.
Build evaluation into the strategy.
Once a strategy is in place build in evaluations. Those evaluations must be hard and soft. It is important to know the hard actions, those that are being completed on time and on budget. But the softer measures are important too. Get a feel for the mood of the company. Know when to intervene to relieve the pressure or when to be tough and more demanding. Listen to what the customer is saying. They should be filled with anticipation, not irritated, confused, and frustrated.
Conclusion
The underpinning reason for a major relaunch is to ensure the brand remains relevant. That is critical for both current and future success. Do it for the right reasons, with the right resources and make sure it is a remembered for the right and positive reasons.
You must answer that last question transparently and honestly.
As an example, a change to the logo might be the outward manifestation of a fundamental customer service initiative you are implementing. Tactically you have decided you are not going to tell customers about it, but you are going to show them. So, the new logo might bring new colours, new designs, new presentations, new business cards, new company slogans, new advertising and such. Internally it brings new motivations, new rewards, new training programs, new procedures, new evaluations; all aligned along with the new customer service initiative.
The change you want people to see, and you want people to experience might not be the same thing but they must add value and be consistent. Every time. Every place. From every person. Consistently. Repeatedly. Without exception.
And the tactic of “show don’t tell”, does not mean no evaluation. Just as with any other process within the company, the results must be measured against the original objectives. And if the change is as described above, evaluate both the effect of the logo change and the results of the customer service initiative. Ultimately what your client feels is critical? So ask him? Do not waste time on staff self-righteous explanations and defensive logic. And plan the next change from there. No time like the NOW!
About Garth Sutherland
Garth has over 20 years’ experience marketing dominant brands in South Africa, established multinational and local start-up brands in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and the GCC.
A scientist and teacher by training he has learned his craft experientially from mentors from a traditional FMCG background.
Garth is an integrator by nature; bringing the best of the brand, the people and the environment together to maximise the brand position, its success and profitability.
In his unique manner he has assisted a number of brands to reach their full potential.
He enjoys the mountains; walking and mountain biking.
If you would like to explore how Garth might assist you in maximising your brand, you can connect via LinkedIn or garthsu@gmail.com
Leave a Reply