Day: 4 July 2025

Rebranding can feel overwhelming. Between contradictory advice, industry jargon, and seemingly endless frameworks, it’s easy to feel like you’re winging it. But what if some of the most widely accepted branding wisdom is actually holding you back? Here are five essential truths that could transform how you approach your rebrand. Always Begin with Assessment, Not Strategy It’s tempting to jump straight into creating your brand strategy. It feels like the logical starting point. But you can’t create an effective strategy without first understanding what’s actually going on with your brand right now. Start by asking yourself these critical questions: Do your potential customers even know your business exists? When they see your brand, do they understand what you offer? Would they genuinely consider buying from you? Can your team articulate what makes your brand different? Do your colleagues know how to make decisions that align with your brand? Understanding your brand’s current reality tells you exactly what you’re working with. What’s already strong? What’s not quite pulling its weight? What’s missing altogether? Skip this step and you risk changing things that are actually working whilst missing the real problems entirely. Our advice: Invest time in understanding your brand’s current strengths and weaknesses through data and honest assessment before you change a single thing. Take Control of Your Brand Strategy (Don’t Outsource Your Thinking) Brand strategists have created an entire industry around complex frameworks and jargon. Brand pyramids, positioning statements, purpose statements – it’s enough to make anyone’s head spin. We’ve learned that this complexity often serves the agencies more than it serves you. The reality is that brand strategy doesn’t need to be complicated. Your leadership team understands business strategy as answers to straightforward questions: Where are we going? What markets do we serve? What are our priorities? Brand strategy works exactly the same way: Why do we exist? What do we do? Who are we as an organisation? How do we do things? How do we look, feel, and sound? When you strip away the jargon and think in plain language, brand strategy becomes something you can engage your entire organisation with. And that’s when it becomes truly valuable – not just as a marketing tool, but as a driver of business growth. Our advice: Don’t abdicate your brand thinking to external experts. Use their expertise where it adds value, but own the strategy yourself. Your intimate knowledge of your business and customers makes you best placed to lead this work. Engage Your Employees as Much as Your Customers We often hear businesses say “customers come first” – and whilst customer focus is obviously important, there’s a critical piece that’s frequently overlooked: your employees. Think of it this way: everything your business does contributes to your brand. Every phone call, every email response, every product delivery, every interaction. Your brand isn’t just what you say in your marketing – it’s what people experience when they interact with your business. That means your colleagues are actually your greatest asset in building brand value. If they don’t understand your brand, how can they deliver it? If their day-to-day experience contradicts what you’re telling customers, why would they believe in it? This is where partnering with HR becomes essential. You’re not just creating marketing campaigns – you’re shaping organisational culture. Focus on three key areas: Get the fundamentals right – Make sure the basics work (phones get answered, website information is accurate, contact forms work) Remove contradictions – If your brand promises simplicity but your product is fiddly to use, that’s a problem Create remarkable moments – Design experiences that genuinely differentiate you and create positive memories Our advice: Think of yourself as a conductor, not a micromanager. Give your colleagues the understanding and tools they need to make on-brand decisions in their everyday work, then trust them to deliver. Your Visual Assets Are Just as Important as Your Brand Positioning There’s been a pendulum swing in marketing where people say “a brand is not a logo” so often that the visual aspects of branding have become undervalued. Your visual assets aren’t just part of your brand – they’re what make your brand recognisable in the first place. They’re not less important than your positioning – they’re what triggers those associations in people’s minds. Think about the brands you recognise instantly. Often it’s a colour combination, a distinctive typeface, a particular style of photography, or a logo shape that catches your eye before you’ve even read a word. Those visual cues are doing the heavy lifting. Your logo, colours, typography, and other distinctive assets matter enormously because: They help people notice and recognise you They trigger the brand associations you’ve worked hard to build They create cohesion across all your marketing They’re often the first thing people see The problem we see is businesses throwing out perfectly good brand assets simply because the marketing team has become bored with them. But your customers might only see your brand for a few seconds each month – they’re not bored. They’re barely familiar. Our advice: Before you change your visual identity, assess whether it’s actually the problem. Familiarity breeds trust in branding. Guard your distinctive assets carefully, and only change them when there’s a genuine strategic reason to do so. Aim for Cohesion, Not Rigid Consistency Brand guidelines. The thick document. The rules about logo placement. The approved colour combinations. The “do this, never do that” mentality. Honestly, we think most brand guidelines do more harm than good. Why? Because they prioritise control over effectiveness. They turn creative professionals into paint-by-numbers robots. They stifle the very creativity that makes brands memorable. Here’s a better approach: Create a clear framework that shows how your brand elements work together, rather than a rigid rulebook. Document your core visual assets clearly – which elements are essential and which are flexible. Then, instead of detailed restrictions, build a library of strong examples showing how your brand works brilliantly across different contexts: Social media posts that get attention … Read more