Now, this is not to take away from the levels of creativity, insight and forward-thinking that goes into creating brands. Nor is it a nod to say that the implementation stage of a rebrand is the most important. It is our firm belief that the strategy, design and implementation of a rebrand should always be considered as one. This means that in order for a rebrand to achieve the maximum levels of impact, at the very beginning of a rebranding process organisations and their agency partners must ask themselves – ‘How will we translate the brand vision into a real customer experience?’
There are three principal rollout scenarios into which the implementation of a rebrand will typically fall, each creates varying degrees of impact and require vastly different levels of investment:
The first of these, the Pareto approach focuses on the 20% of brand touchpoints that generate 80% of the impact. This approach requires a deep understanding of the customer journey to pinpoint exactly what factors affect the decision-making process. The global nature of organisations can make this extremely complex but ultimately enormously rewarding.
Secondly, Replacement is the practice of updating brand carriers once they come to the end of their lifecycle. It creates little impact but requires low levels of financial and resource investment with virtually no disruption to the company.
Finally, the Big Bang rollout scenario is the one that requires the highest levels of investment but creates unrivalled levels of impact. Here, the identity change takes place in the shortest amount of time possible; with outlets, liveries and communications changed overnight.
While you may look at this and think that the Big Bang approach is the logical one to adopt due to the levels of impact generated, for many organisations this is just not feasible. The costs and the effect on the organisation are simply too high and in many cases, not enough prior planning has taken place to undertake a project of this magnitude. Instead, the smart way to roll out the new brand is to adopt a mixed approach that utilises the benefits of all three scenarios – for example, a global brand could decide certain geographic territories will adopt a big bang approach.
Working in collaboration with our clients and agency partners, Endpoint develops a brand implementation masterplan that does just that!
We determine exactly how our client's brand identity and positioning will come to life in the real world. We take into account the needs of the end user as well as the internal capabilities of the organisation – and the requirements of its people – to provide a streamlined implementation approach that minimises visual clutter and ensures a consistent and effective application of the new brand throughout the world. At the same time, we help to keep disruption and downtime at a minimum throughout the rollout.
After all the hard work and time that goes into creating a new brand identity, don’t let it fall down at the final hurdle. An implementation masterplan from Endpoint is the key to rebranding success.