As times change, so, too, must companies—and their branding. Indeed, the evolution of a company’s brand is often a good sign: It can mean that the business is growing, adding services or updating to stay relevant with an expanded customer base. A rebranding doesn’t have to mean a major overhaul. Sometimes a color palette refresh or a new content voice can make a big difference in how a brand is perceived.
So what are some of the simplest ways a business can refresh its brand—and what are important considerations to cover first? Members of Forbes Agency Council offer their tips below.
Members of Forbes Agency Council share simple tips to help businesses refresh their brands across platforms.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Invest In High-Quality Content And Visuals
These days, you can spot bad photography or videography from a mile away. Investing in high-quality content can help bring a company into the 21st century when you know a full rebranding is going to take time. Stock photos and videos are tempting, but when you see your website banner image on a blog post, you’ll wish you had your own. Not to mention, it keeps your site and socials fresh. – Jessica Gonzalez, InCharged
2. Leverage Thought Leadership
I’m a big fan of thought leadership and using provocative insights as a means to re-establish an image or reposition a brand/company. Properly done through article placement, presentations and consistent messaging (even as subtle as signature line changes in an email) this can go far to refresh a company and ignite new conversations. I coin this process as “leading thoughtfully”! – Dave Wendland, Hamacher Resource Group
3. Create A Word-of-Mouth Campaign
A brand doesn’t always have to design a new logo, change colors or come up with a new tagline. Creating a word-of-mouth campaign featuring customer advocates can help shape consumer perception of a brand. Make an effort to capitalize on your brand advocates and use them in videos, photos, copy and any other form of marketing to help craft a new view of your product or service. – Rebecca Kowalewicz, Clearbridge Branding Agency
4. Create A Theme
Instagram is a good place to start when updating your brand. Typically, all it takes is about six to nine new photos to change the look of your grid. Find a filter/preset that you like and apply it to all of the photos you post. Make sure the photos are well-lit and high-quality. Use a consistent filter on these images to create a cohesive look and provide an instant facelift for your profile! – Darian Kovacs, Jelly Digital Marketing & PR
5. Consider Your Brand Voice
A minimal investment, high-yield way to update your brand and make it more relevant is through your brand voice. How well do you really know your consumers? Does your voice resonate with them? Is it distinctive? Does it match your personality and reflect your values? Consider both tone and context. Where people find you and engage with you is just as important as what you sound like when they do. – Kelli Corney, Mightily
6. Listen To Customers
When a company is considering a brand refresh or even a full rebrand, every decision should begin and end with what the customers and prospective customers think and want. The brand exists for them, so even a light enhancement of a company’s image must be based on some voice of customer or market research. Otherwise, the company is only changing it for themselves. – Erik Clausen, CG Life
7. Keep Up With Trends
Your image can be refreshed without a full rebrand by keeping up with visual trends and staying relevant. Focus on updating the types of images or graphical style you use and cater them to the people you’re trying to appeal to. This will keep your brand relatable. – Nicole Dorskind, ThirtyThree
8. Focus On A New Facet Of Your Story
Refreshing a brand might be as easy as leveraging the original branding investment to find a new story to tell. It’s my experience that good foundational branding not only identifies a position to own relative to the competition and the essence of what makes the brand relevant to the target market(s), but also produces multiple dimensions—or facets—of the brand to be mined to keep messaging fresh. – Patrick Nycz, NewPoint Marketing
9. Determine Your ‘Why’
Before diving into a rebranding effort, it’s important to understand what’s driving the need for a refresh. For example, is it to improve aesthetics or is messaging not aligned with how sales go to market? Based on that, rebranding can be phased (like focusing only on the homepage and sales presentation to start) or iterative (making the brand similar to the old one so change is minimal). – Natalie Nathanson, Magnetude Consulting
10. Update Client-Facing Messaging
Most companies believe that a brand refresh is visual. Sometimes, it’s simply too expensive to change signage, collateral, etc. When this is the case, we advise clients to consider updating their client-facing messaging, such as tagline, elevator pitch, value statement, etc. We have found that refreshing your basic messaging can generate the same positive effects as a complete visual brand refresh. – John Gumas, Gumas Advertising
11. Act More Human
Focus on the authentic voice and tone of your brand, company and product. Lose the promotional “push” sales messages and start communicating in an authentic, human way, interacting with customers consistently through that voice on your social channels, blog content and in person. – Katie Schibler Conn, KSA Marketing + Partnerships
12. Tap Into The Power Of Micro-Influencers
Brands should partner with niche influencers within their specific target audience and empower them to become an extension of their marketing teams and advocate for the products. By using technology to scale this process, brands can effectively refresh their image by reaching hundreds of micro-audiences with highly targeted, authentic and personalized messages. – David Shadpour, Social Native
13. Change Your Brand Colors
Sometimes even a small change has a great psychological effect on your market. Changing the colors of a brand, for example, can be shockingly effective. For example, McDonald’s could at least turn their logo green to symbolize “healthy and fresh,” rather than the current red and orange, which symbolize “risk.” This would send a very clear message to customers and even gain media attention. – Susan Akbarpour, MAVATAR TECHNOLOGIES INC.
14. Launch Extension Initiatives
Launching “extension initiatives” off of the core brand allows the brand to introduce a new image without having to fully rebrand. Extension initiatives can focus on a particular niche, segment or vertical that can show a new face of the brand without reworking the core brand image. – Jordan Edelson, Appetizer Mobile LLC
15. Consider The Most Important Trait
Companies should consider what the top trait of their brand that they live and breathe every day is and whether it’s reflected in the brand positioning and communicated throughout. Branding should reflect the true value of that trait rather than an aspiration to have one. – Inna Semenyuk, InnavationLabs
