A brand isn’t just a logo. It represents a company’s personality and influences how every single person — from customers to employees — perceive the business.

Getting a rebranding effort right is vitally important, and companies need to proceed with a purpose. At Merritt Group, we take a 360-degree approach to branding, where messaging, design and brand communication all get refreshed at once, creating a unified vision to guide a company’s future.

While a redesign may seem daunting, breaking it down into steps, and understanding the purpose of each milestone along the way, can give your company confidence that the result will boldly reclaim your brand’s place in the market.

1. Align Your Allies

What do your customers love about you? What do they hate? Step one to any redesign should involve a lot of research and information gathering. Companies can better understand what their brand allies already think about them through focus groups and surveys. In fact, you may find during this process that your customers and employees already love your brand and would find a new concept jarring.

Make sure you are rebranding for the right reasons, and align your future efforts with what your consumers want.

2. Take Your Corporate Culture to Therapy

Think of your company as a person, and then take it to the analyst’s couch to understand it inside and out. What are its values? How is it special? What is it and, maybe more importantly, what isn’t it? In this part of the process, Merritt will guide you through a questionnaire that influences future brainstorming sessions. It’s crucial in this process to be truthful — even if it’s uncomfortable.

Your brand needs to be the hero of its own story, and understanding what makes it tick is key to capturing its personality in a redesign. And since every hero needs a villain, identify your brand’s enemy. This doesn’t necessarily mean another company — it can be a thought or trend. For a hotel, it might be the sharing economy. For a telehealth company, it might be regulatory fears. Whatever your business is battling, make sure your new brand communicates that it can conquer it.

3. Leave Your Left Brain in the Boardroom 

Yes, the effects of a brand redesign will ultimately be reflected in a ledgerbook, but now is not the time to think in specifics. A brand is not a logo or a single piece of collateral: It is the lifeblood of an organization. Some brand experts call it your operating system — the DNA that determines how your company evolves through any scenario.

To capture this, Merritt Group will walk your company through a visual brief brainstorming, where we bring in images, words and colors that all evoke a feeling. The collage of materials we bring all represent the sentiments your employees and buyers expressed in their focus groups and via questionnaires. However, these exact words and images will not necessarily appear in any final product we help you create.A picture of a group of people at a desk does not mean that exact image will end up in collateral, and a color that doesn’t already match your logo isn’t automatically out. This process isn’t for literal interpretation. It serves as the basis for all the options for your redesign. Working together, we’ll narrow down these options to a few top contenders.

4. Free Yourself From the Sea of Sameness 

Do you notice a theme in all your competitors’ brands? Are all other government contractors depicted with red, white and blue? Are all other transportation companies using a globe or all other cellular providers using a signal icon? If your brand is going to succeed, it can’t be generic.

Merritt Group will work with your company to help it stand out in a fresh way that still captures your place in the industry. When you use generic imagery that could be used for any other company, it will never truly look like yours. Our goal after brainstorming is to bring ideas to the table that are so strong, if your brand’s name were covered up, everyone would still know exactly which company it belonged to.

After that, we’ll guide you through any final iterations and solidify the final product.

5. Make a Manifesto 

Once the brand details are finalized, it’s time to roll it out. Merritt Group threads the final brand through all your products, with new logos, brand guidelines, marketing pieces and messaging.

But rebranding success doesn’t just require stellar collateral. Your brand needs ambassadors — identify people at your company that will serve as brand champions. Merritt Group can create a brand manifesto to train them in your new guidelines and empower them to share their knowledge with their co-workers. Make sure they have updated templates and logos so your new brand rollout is seamless across all company materials.

Then, once your internal teams are excited, it’s time for your customers to meet your new brand.  Whether through station domination, sports events or social campaigns, make sure your new logo and other pieces of collateral and messaging land where your buyers live through a comprehensive marketing campaign.

Interested in giving your brand a redesign or a light refresh? Contact Merritt Group today at info@merrittgrp.com to talk with our award-winning creative team today!