When is a Good Time to Refresh Your Brand
Although most well-known companies have been around for decades, their brand image never remained the same. For instance, Taco Bell changed up its logo six times ever since its inception in 1962.
As time passes, your brand may no longer accurately reflect your company. Think of it as trying to wear the same clothes you wore as a kid.
On the one hand, they simply don’t fit anymore. On the other hand, these clothes likely fell out of fashion years ago. Not to mention that you might have changed your fashion tastes over the years anyway.
In other words, as your business expands, your branding may no longer reflect your company accurately.
Moreover, as time goes by, design trends change, and it’s pretty easy to make yourself look outdated if you’re not up-to-date with the latest changes in design.
These are some tell-tale signs your brand might be up for a refresh. But before we get into more detail, let’s first look at what a refresh exactly is.
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What Is A Brand Refresh?
In short, refreshing is the process of updating your brand. This practice involves making slight tweaks to your slogan, logo, color palette, typography, marketing material, or overall design to make your brand more appealing to your audience.
Note that refreshing your brand is different from rebranding your company. Although these practices have plenty of things in common, rebranding is a complete overhaul of your company’s image.
Beyond tweaking visuals and messaging, rebranding involves creating a new identity. This process is usually done whenever companies prepare for a merger, target a new audience, or expand to new markets.
Although knowing when your business might be up for a rebrand is pretty obvious, the signals that indicate a refresh might be a little more subtle. That said, let’s see how you can figure out when you need to freshen up your company’s image.
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When’s The Right Time For A Brand Refresh?
1. You have trouble attracting new customers
If sales slow down and your customers base is stagnant, it might indicate that your brand image is outdated.
Sure, loyal customers will probably continue to purchase from you, as you’ve already earned their trust and are familiar with your brand, but the problem lies in bringing new people to your business.
Logos and web designs that look like they’re straight out of the ’90s often give consumers the impression that a business is not taken care of. Consequently, potential customers may not trust you and turn to your competition instead.
The fix?
Start by freshening up the logo. Think of your logo as the face of your brand: it serves as a point of identification for your audience, making your business instantly recognizable.
In other words, the logo plays a vital role in making an excellent first impression. That said, make sure your logo is sleek, modern, use the appropriate fonts, and capture your brand’s key elements.
Also, adopt a timeless design. You don’t want your logo’s design to fall out of fashion in the next few months and have to start all over again.
Secondly, freshen up your website. We’ve talked with a few experts from a London based web agency, and they said that your website’s design is a critical factor that determines visitors to click away or continue browsing.
Your website has to be up-to-date with the latest design trends. More specifically, emphasize minimalism and visual elements.
Related Article: How To Create The Perfect Branded Website
2. Your brand no longer reflects your offers
Suppose you’ve started by selling personalized T-shirts. As your business grew, you’ve also expanded your product offerings. For instance, alongside T-shirts, you now sell personalized key chains, posters, coffee mugs, etc.
Although growing your business is great news, your branding needs to keep pace with the expansion. Otherwise, you may instill confusion within your audience and end up not bringing enough attention to your new products.
This is another reason that might explain why your sales stagnate. After all, you won’t be able to sell new products if your audience doesn’t know about their existence in the first place.
If you find yourself in this situation, you might need to go back to the drawing board. Make sure to adjust your marketing strategy to highlight all of your products.
You may also need to tweak your brand’s visual identity and messaging to describe what your business is all about accurately. In other words, you’ll have to tweak your colors, logo, brand voice, slogan, and unique value proposition.
3. You start to look like your competitors
Without a doubt, numerous businesses are competing against each other in any given niche at any given time. As these businesses grow simultaneously, they often subconsciously adopt similar design cues.
Take a look at Gucci and Chanel, for example. Both high-end fashion brands have oddly similar logos. The same thing goes with Youtube and Netflix. They are both video-streaming services, and their color palette consists of red, black, and white. Although these businesses are still distinguishable, you may still mix them up at a quick first glance.
If your business is in the same scenario, your brand might be up for a refresh. That said, research your competitors to identify opportunities that could help you differentiate yourself. Take a look at their fonts, colors, and logos to identify their visual style and compare it to yours. Moreover, identify their tone of voice and see how their audience interacts with it.
For instance, if one of your competitors uses formal language that their audience does not engage with, it might be the perfect moment for you to sweep in and adopt a more casual tone of voice. This also may be an excellent time to take an in-depth look and reevaluate your brand identity, as you’ll need to find key elements that make your brand unique in the market.
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Final Words
All in all, refreshing your brand will be necessary throughout your business’s life cycle. But in terms of how often you should do it, you’ll need to find a sweet spot.
If you do it too rarely, the chances are that it will already be too late. If you refresh your brand too frequently, you may risk confusing your audience and ultimately diluting your brand’s core identity.
That said, make sure to be on the lookout for the signs listed above, as they’re often tell-tale signals that indicate whenever you might need to do a refresh.
About The Guest Author
Philipe Hills is a marketing specialist that specializes in driving business through digital, visual, and content marketing techniques, currently based in Los Angeles.
