A rebrand can bring many opportunities for businesses, and it, of course, brings challenges. Having just navigated a successful rebrand, Kirsten Allegri Williams, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Optimizely, has top tips on the best way to move forward and how to identify the critical business driver and set clear objectives.
Having just completed our own rebrand, relaunching Episerver as Optimizely following our acquisition of the latter in 2020, we are well aware of both the challenges and opportunities involved in such a step.
Our rebrand was fuelled by our desire to elevate our already well-known brand with the benefits and credibility offered by the acquisition – combining both businesses to create a stronger, more capable force.
By bringing together two digital experience powerhouses, each with its own personalisation, content and optimisation strengths, we can now offer our customers an even stronger combination of user and site-level data, giving them the data-driven insights they need to understand what is happening in each digital experience and continually optimise their content.
A rebrand can bring an array of opportunities for businesses – especially after a merger or acquisition – including the ability to connect with new audiences and deliver new and enhanced product and service offerings. But changing the identity of a brand is much more than simply swapping out a name or updating a logo – behind the decision to rebrand lies a multitude of other considerations, regarding ethos, ambition, capability and approach.
Since our brand relaunch, I have taken a look back to see where our strategy excelled, the key challenges we faced and the types of metrics that will enable us to measure our success going forward.
Below is my advice for brands looking to navigate a successful rebrand.
Identify the critical business driver
Firstly, it’s important to understand if there are sufficient critical business drivers behind your decision to rebrand and if this is the right path forward for your company.
In our case, we needed to be able to successfully position a breadth of product capabilities in the market across two different brands, while ensuring all of our digital assets were strong enough to compete and cut through such a crowded market. This critical product driver was what led us to the decision of rebranding.
You should consider looking at your company’s existing product portfolio and ask yourself the following questions:
● Is there an innovative product or capability that needs to be positioned in a different way than it is currently, or has been in the past?
● What products are in your overall portfolio, and has your business model recently changed?
Businesses are currently going through rapid changes as a result of COVID-19 and are now putting a larger emphasis on improving their digital channels in order to pivot to more flexible online models. We’re now faced with more ways to reach consumers than ever before, and these are the types of opportunities companies are now embracing in order to capitalise on this new consumer demand that didn’t previously exist.
We know for a fact that these consumer behaviours are not going to change any time soon, even post-pandemic. Businesses need to consider improving their digital services and think about the end-to-end customer journey that can help drive business growth.
If the products or services you sold previously are no longer meeting new consumer demands, this may be a forcing function where you need to refresh your value proposition. This is where a rebrand can be beneficial, allowing you to package up your offering in a new way, attracting new audiences in the process.
Set clear objectives
Once you have made the decision to rebrand, the first step forward is creating a rich data set that will enable you to take actions inspired by a fact-based approach.
However, it’s important to understand that a brand strategy goes far beyond just updating existing company messaging or refreshing your visual identity system. This is why it’s so important to understand the products and services your business is offering and the differentiation that it creates in the market.
When developing your business case for a rebrand, ensure you have a set of clear objectives that are aligned with the company’s overall growth strategies across the different geographies and market segments that it serves and those it wishes to expand to. Remember that different markets and locations will often have different requirements, so don’t make the mistake of assuming you can simply ‘copy and paste’ across regions and sectors.
Extend collaboration
When embarking on a rebrand journey, it’s crucial to get the whole leadership team on board from the start. Senior buy-in is a must, in order to secure budget and drive momentum. But the decision itself doesn’t lie only with the likes of CMOs, driving the marketing position or CEOs, driving the company direction.
CMOs need to collaborate with key leaders across the wider management team, whether it’s the CFO, CIO, CPO, head of sales or head of partner ecosystems – everyone needs to have a voice in the brand’s direction to ensure the company achieves the same goal.
CMOs also need to ensure they have a digital strategy in place right from the get-go. For those looking to rebrand following a merger or acquisition, this a key component of success and will help to accelerate the integration of the two brands.
While this may be challenging at first, this will actually create more opportunities for digital and marketing teams to come together to offer a fresh approach to how you’re going to scale and modernise your current offering. These opportunities will also help you to future-proof your business and enable growth at an accelerated pace.
Determine success
Ahead of a rebrand, you should look to identify a set of metrics that you can use to determine success following the launch. For example, consider measuring the overall organic growth in terms of digital traffic and purchase considerations – especially across the analyst and media community to understand the company’s share of voice.
Going a step further, look at the company’s ability to bring inbound demand to the business to see whether it can boost conversion rates into the pipeline and close revenue.
While these elements will help you measure success, it’s important to experiment along the way. Don’t just dive into a rebrand without testing the water first – you need to carry out on-going social listening, experimenting with content and messaging and refine it if it’s not generating a positive impact from your key audiences.
It’s vital to create a listening mechanism that can help you to understand how you connect and engage with your audience and whether or not you’re converting any potential leads into new business opportunities. You can then optimise this approach on an on-going basis to ensure you’re measuring success in the best way possible.
The rebranding process is by no means an easy feat, and there will always be some hurdles that crop up along the way. However, if there’s a need to inject some fresh life into your brand, reposition your current offerings to meet new consumer demand or if you’re looking to combine two brands together following a merger and acquisition, then the rebranding journey is definitely the right path for you.
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