Rebranding is not always the solution, but it became clear that for us it was time to. Here's why..
We had outgrown what our business originally was.
Many businesses have a clear idea of who they want to be when they start their business. However, just as we grow as people and evolve with age, so do businesses. When this happens, sometimes there is a huge disconnect from who we have become and what our brand portrays. This is when the thoughts of rebranding seem to come into play.
When we started our business we were interested in having a large design agency. The dream was to have a team of all sorts of designers so that we could tackle anything and everything that a client would ask of us. This was our idea of success because graphic designers before us that were successful followed this model.
Once we started down this path, it became clear that hiring people and managing a team was not as glamorous as we had made it up to be in our heads. It soon became clear that we were losing passion, losing quality, and losing our founding ideas. We wanted everything that came out of our company to be the highest quality with no exceptions.
So, we began to rethink how we could position ourselves in the market place in order to maintain quality, grow as a company, and help our clients in the best way possible.
To do this, we decided that we needed to position ourselves as a small boutique marketing and graphic design firm. We want our clients to know that even though we aren't the biggest team, we are the best at the services we offer. Many times a big team does not mean better. Most times, it means you are working with an agency that has been around for a long time but the reality is, your designs will be done by an unexperienced designer and the design instructions will be translated through many many middle men (I know this because right out of college this is where I was.)
We also wanted our clients to feel heard and understood. Our relationship with our clients and understanding them as well as their business and market is what helps us excel. This is another unique aspect of working with us rather than a large agency. We truly care about our clients.
So, this is where we made a final decision to rebrand and refocus our business for the long term.
Our target market had changed.
Because of the new direction we wanted to go in our business, our target market had not completely changed, but definitely made a shift. Up to this point we had been working mostly with very small businesses. We absolutely love this, but in reality we wanted to make sure that our clients placed value on not only having inexpensive design and marketing but instead having services that might cost more but over the long term would have a great impact because of the strategy behind every decision.
Our target market is still small businesses but we wanted to focus on these more specific aspects.
The aesthetics of our brand assets no longer appealed to our target market.
Our brand was created not having our target market's values in mind since that had changed for us. We wanted our brand to look high end so that we could portray our value to our clients through the aesthetics of our brand.
This is when we decided to do a whole revamp. We redesigned our logo, all print materials, website, social media and more. This was a hard decision to come to, but now that we are here, it is very clear that this would add value to our business for years to come.
Since we were beginning to see these issues, we would rather change now than later so that we don't lose even more time of brand recognition.
For most businesses, rebranding is a very difficult decision. This is very understandable considering the cost that it takes to pay a designer and reproduce all of your business' assets. The reason it was clear for us to make the switch was that the value far outweighed the risk and investment. We could see the value of this new, well thought out brand paying dividends for decades to come by connecting more directly with our new target audience. Our previous logo only had 2 years of visibility since we had not been in business for that long. This is one aspect that made the decision a no brainer for us. However, no matter how long a business has been in existence, rebranding could be the right decision. It is different for every business and their unique experience.
It was definitely a great decision for us. If you are considering rebranding we would love to talk with you about how we can help and if it is the right decision for you.
Check out our blog about what a brand strategy is to learn more about this topic.
Also, our blog What are you changing this new year in your business? may be of help!
