There is no doubt that companies are in need of a strong logo to attract and engage customer attention and dictate strong sales revenue and growth. Seeing that customers are visually driven, brands that look the same over a period of time can usually lead to reduced interest and excitement among customers. This is why many enterprises refresh their brands by giving a makeover of their logo design that helps breathe a new life into their branding efforts.
However, the challenge lies in knowing when to update your brand and what to update. Many companies make the mistake of overlooking the fine balance and end up making too drastic of a change that only leads to a backlash. In this post, we look at when companies should update their brand and what aspects should be changed to preserve their brand identity.
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When Should an Enterprise Refresh Their Brand?
The question of when to update your brand hinges on several factors. First, any brand refresh decision should be based on time. Ask yourself how many years has it been since you last updated your logo? Refreshing your logo can be important if your logo appears to look outdated and out of sync with the changing tastes and needs of customers. Some of the most powerful brands such as Pepsi, Starbucks, and others continually make refinements to ensure their brand is consistent with the times. This is why it is always important to consider rebranding efforts on sales revenue and customer brand recall.
Second, your brand may need an update due to it being inconsistent. The message your brand communicates may not match with that offered by your other marketing and branding activities or that of your products and services. Making sure marketing messages across all aspects of the brand are consistent can be essential for driving your company forward.
Third, if you feel you are no longer targeting your main audience properly, then you will need to refresh your brand to adapt it accordingly. You may want to narrow or broaden your marketing focus for which you will need to reposition or rebrand your logo.
How Much Is Too Much?
After deciding your logo is in need of a makeover, your next challenge is making sure you do not take it too far. If you simply want to tweak a little, you need to determine what aspects of the logo are the most critical to customer attention and memory. After all, brands represent an accumulation of consistent marketing efforts, and making too radical of a change can compromise your brand identity.
Apparel brand, GAP, received a backlash for changing its logo too much. Instead of going for a more sophisticated approach, it adopted a very informal tone to its logo after which it reverted back to its previous logo design. Refreshing your brands is not as straightforward as it might seem to be; it can be successful or not. Be sure to consider all factors when considering refreshing your brand.
