Maintaining brand consistency is never an easy but it’s even harder just after a rebrand so today we’d like to give you some practical tips that will help you maintain brand consistency after a rebrand.
The reason the task of maintaining brand consistency is so much more challenging just after a rebrand is you’ll just have been through the relentless process of defining your new brand and scheduling its implementation.
This could be the point you think everything has been done.
It hasn’t!
Now your new brand must come kicking and screaming into the world … and, more importantly, it’s during these early days that your new brand will succeed or fail so getting it right is essential.
This is why you need to put everything in place to ensure you maintain your new brand’s consistency now you’ve rebranded.
Simdure’s top tips for maintaining brand consistency after a rebrand
1. Publish brand guidelines
Once you have your brands, publish a central set of brand guidelines setting out your new look, voice and style.
Your guidelines will educate your colleagues and keep them honest by confirming and reinforcing:
- Colour palettes
- Fonts
- Logo patterns
- Which versions of which logos should be used for what and when
- Tone of voice
Your new guidelines should be easily accessible to everyone who will need to use them.
They also need to be easily understandable. Some designers will produce something that looks aesthetically amazing but totally unintelligible.
Obviously, this is no good!
Everyone needs to know what they need to do and how/where to access and use your new imagery and fonts in the right way.
2. Create templates built around your new brand
Waiting around for your designers to create new documents using your new branding for you isn’t practical, efficient or cost-effective.
Instead, as part of the rebranding, ask them to produce to templates for the types of content you create most frequently (one-pagers for specific clients, pitch or quotation docs, your blog and, of course, your email signature) so you can instantly edit and use.
However, while these should be editable, they shouldn’t be customisable. Your team should be able to drop copy in or change contact details. They shouldn’t be able to totally reshape them for their own purposes.
This only leads to brand anarchy. It will water down and neuter your new branding in its most formative stage.
3. Drive home your new brand
Once you’ve locked down your brand internally, it’s time to promote it externally. Get it visible!
First you need to invest in strong visuals. These need to be used on your email signatures (yes, that again!), your brochures, your website, your communications, your pitches and quotes and across all your social platforms.
As part of your rebranding analyse every touchpoint you have with your clients and customers and make sure you have a standard branded asset for each.
And make sure your people know:
- Where all these assets are
- Exactly how/when to use them
- That they must use them!
4. Appoint a brand champion
Our final tip that will help you maintain your brand after a rebrand is to appoint a brand champion.
Give one member of your team (probably a senior marketer) responsibility for educating your team on why brand consistency is vital and telling them how to do it.
They will also need to take ongoing responsibility for keeping an eye on how you use your new brand to make sure your brand guidelines are being followed and identify whether further training is needed to maintain your new brand.
Don’t worry if this all looks like a lot! When we deliver a rebrand, we don’t leave until all of this is sorted out and you have everything you need to launch and maintain your brand. If you want to find out more, please get in touch today by emailing us at [email protected].
