There comes a point in the lifespan of every brand where it starts to fall out of resonance with its audience. Whether its identity has fallen out of style, Brand Core is no longer relevant, or there’s no longer a connection between the brand in a dynamic marketplace, staying on top of your brand is paramount. And brands don’t only undergo wear and tear during major events, but in periods of economic uncertainty and upheaval. Whether you’re a large brand with millions of followers or a small business on the corner, taking on a rebrand is a strategic move any company can make to stay ahead of the market for years to come.
Unfortunately, for many businesses and business owners, it can be daunting to think about the costs, time, and ROI of a rebrand. Changing your brand can seem like a financial mystery. And it’s true: not every aspect of a rebrand can be measured financially. There are brand perception intangibles that riddle the market: we like to say a brand is how much of your customer’s headspace you occupy. How do you measure that?
On top of all that, many brands and marketing leaders are responsible to a plethora of company stakeholders from C-suite executives and boards, to loyal clients and fanbases. All of these things scream for a clear ROI of a rebrand project—fortunately, there are ways to balance it all and make good on your investment.
In this article, we’ll tackle all the aspects of a rebrand and its ROI that you might have questions about, including:
- The Purpose of a Rebrand
- The Benefits of a Rebrand
- The Cost of a Rebrand
- How to Measure the ROI of a Rebrand
- How to Rebrand the Right Way
To start, let’s cover reasons for rebranding and why they matter.
The Purpose of a Rebrand
First off, a rebrand is the best option when there are more than a few issues with what your brand is communicating. A brand encompasses more than just a logo, some colors, and a font—a brand includes purpose, mission, vision, and company values (we call it your Brand Core); it includes how you, your employees, and your customers perceive your brand, who you’re talking to, and the strategic moves you’re going to make as a company. From every stakeholder and interaction stems a new thread in the tapestry of your brand. In turn, a rebrand looks at, assesses, and then aligns all of these things to create a new, stronger brand.
Think of the person you know who you view as ‘fit’ or ‘healthy’, do they take actions that make you think that? Or the person you view as ‘stylish’ or ‘fashionable’, how carefully do they curate this image to maintain your perception of them? These actions that may seem small or out-of-mind actually build up a larger picture and essentially become a ‘brand perception.’
Too often for company brands, there is a disconnect between how they think they are perceived and how they are actually perceived—what a brand is saying and how it is being received by its audience is different. This, in turn, leads to a gap in desired business outcomes. (Marty Neumeier refers to this as THE BRAND GAP.) To assess whether or not your company is suffering a brand gap, answer the following questions:
- Is what you’re saying and what your customers are saying the same?
- Are you generating leads that match what you want to be driving?
- How far off from your marketing and sales goals are you?
- How far off from your hiring and retention goals are you?
And don’t be fooled: a proper rebrand can more closely align these things and many more! By doing more than just changing a logo or a hex code on a website (that’s closer to a brand refresh), a rebrand makes strategic moves that align with long-term business objectives and client perception goals. The communication and perception alignment alone makes a rebrand worth the investment, even through small adjustments that alter the brand trajectory.
The Benefits of a Rebrand
It’s no secret that a rebrand is a lot of work for a company and the agency they bring on, but the benefit of hiring an agency is that they’ve done it before. With comprehensive processes outlined and the skills to help create, sharpen, and amplify brand messaging, Studio Ostendo anticipates a few specific benefits including:
- Market differentiation
- Effortless conversion
- Increased revenue
- More aligned teams
- Greater customer and employee loyalty
- Successful fundraising and donation campaigns
A rebrand project is a large investment of both time and money for any organization, so be sure to align your objectives with the potential benefits of a rebrand.
The Cost of a Rebrand
How much should you spend on a rebrand? What will you get in return? What’s the value added? Let’s chat for a bit.
First, as with any creative and expertise-driven project, there is much more strategy involved than just moving or changing a few pixels. As such, no quality creative professional or agency will be charging a face-value rate. It takes a well-versed team that’s willing to adapt to and learn from your specific needs and brand issues to implement a world-renowned brand. One designer once ominously asked,
“What does it cost you if you don’t fix these issues?”
Now, I’ve heard of agencies that charge just $1000 and offer the same solution to all their clients (like a McDonald’s hamburger to cure all hunger pans), and others that won’t get on a call unless your budget is $250,000 or more. (Fun reference, PEPSI SPENT $1 MILLION ON A LOGO and some laughable ‘research’. They still haven’t gotten their rebrand quite right, though the Pepsi brand refresh does look good.)
For us, we build custom brand proposals based on company size and what the value gained will be from the rebranding process. It only makes sense that the cost of a rebrand be relative to what the company stands to gain or lose.
How to Measure the ROI of a Rebrand
When measuring the ROI of a rebrand, the broader you can stay the better. While yes, we like to aim at specific brand targets, oftentimes rebrand outcomes are broader and take more time to have an effect than a traditional measurement window.
With that said, I love quick math, so let me do some for you as an example:
- Take the total revenue for 12 months after a rebrand (e.g., $2,000,000).
- Subtract 12 months’ revenue prior to rebrand (e.g. $1,500,000).
- Divide this figure ($500,000) by the cost of the rebrand (e.g. $25,000) to get your ROI.
In our example, that’s a 20× return on investment! For what it’s worth, we target a 5× return on marketing dollars.
We can also to this with something like website traffic. Here are some numbers from the Sweat 60 Rebrand:
- Website users were up 21.7% in 6 months (no ongoing article writing).
- Key website events were up 53.3%
- Average Keyword position was up 37.9 spots.
Many of these kinds of numbers aren’t things we can project but instead are measured in retrospect. To the dismay of many business owners, no one does business in a vacuum. Business is done in an ever-changing environment.
- The economy runs in cycles.
- Customers and employees cycle in and out of the business.
- Marketing strategies and platforms are constantly evolving.
- Competitors are investing resources too.
- Supply chains are fickle.
- Products and services change and evolve.
- Government policies are constantly changing.
Each of these contributes not only to the cost of a rebrand but also to the short-term ROI of one. Is there another magic formula for determining the value of a rebrand? Unfortunately not. As always we suggest using many individual metrics to paint a holistic picture of the value of your rebrand as it applies to your initial goals.
When measuring the ROI of a rebrand, it’s also important to pay attention to the many facets of who a brand impacts. Namely, the difference between a consumer brand, and an employer brand, and looking internally vs. externally.
Consumer Brand Measurements:
- ROI of marketing
- Lead volume
- Lead-to-Opportunity conversion rate
- Time to close
- Number of new customers
Employer Brand Measurements:
- Hiring metricssome text
- Number of applicants for each role
- Retention metrics
- Employee longevity
All of these measurements together add up to a more comprehensive way to measure the return on investment for a rebrand. There’s no one magic number that signifies success, but the aggregate health and performance of the brand.
Oftentimes after a rebrand process and website launch, there can be an initial bit of turmoil: customers don’t recognize packaging; search engines have to reindex your site; what customers are hearing from you is different or foreign; your new tradeshow booth looks different; and so on. These brief dips in performance meetrics are almost always followed by a slingshot into the positive. Especially regarding the targeted objectives of the rebrand initiative.
The Oatly rebrand is a great example of this. Unknown to most people, the oat milk brand had bee aroud long decades before the milk alternative trend in the consumer space. But nobody knew who they were. On top of that, even though they had a loyal concumer base, they weren’t growing and had stagnated. Their rebrand was so radical that, initially, they lost part of their go-to customers who no longer ‘saw’ their product on the shelves: the rebrand completely changed the way the brand looked.
However, by holding onto their new brand strategy, new messaging initiatives, and doubling down on their visual identity, Oatly quickly became the go-to oat milk brand. They’ve gained a huge percent of the market, converted milk-drinkers to oat milk afficianadoes, and are frequently in the news going viral for some new brand stunt (including running the website www.fckoatly.com).
Needless to say, the ROI for the Oatly rebrand, and the bravery they had to make such a huge pivot, has payed dividends in droves.
How to Rebrand the Right Way
If you need a rebrand, the perfect time to do it was probably yesterday But while you’re still thinking about a rebrand, be sure to consider a few things to get it right.
Make sure you need a rebrand, not a brand refresh.
There’s a huge difference between a rebrand and a brand refresh (so much so that we have a whole blog titled: Rebrand vs. Brand Refresh). The difference boils down to the degree of change you need to enact to see the change and results you want. If your logo and visual identity is out of date but everything else is aligned in your business, then you just need a refresh. If your company direction is clouded, your employees can’t articulate who you are, or you’re looking to make a big market shift, then you need a rebrand.
Follow best rebranding practices.
In our experience, it’s best to do a rebrand in one fell swoop. Getting everyone on board, having the necessary conversations, doing all the work in one headspace, and creating a brand that targets the the right objectives is always more effective in a unified process. Most rebrands that fail of never see the light of day are sporatic, inconsistent, and done without best practices.
Launch your rebrand correctly.
Launching your rebrand isn’t where most of the work happens, but its certainly where the rubber meets the road. A brand launch can make or break a rebrand initiative depending on the scale of your company. There are three effective ways to launch a rebrand:
- Quickly. You launch everything at once: a brand announcement blog, video, and press release, your new website, your updated brand materials.
- Slowly. You change one thing at a time in according to a priority/urgency/cost matrix.
- Hybrid. It’s much easier to change a digital presence, and harder to change a physical one. For companies with hundreds of locations, or say, colleges with dozens of buildings, you may quickly launch your digital brand and printed materials, then devise a rollout plan for your physical assets over time. Even a $10,000 rebrand can cost multi-millions in implementation.
These methods work well, but don’t be fooled. If you set out to launch your rebrand and choose the ‘slow’ method because you don’t have all the materials ready or you don’t have a rollout plan yet, then you’re not actually choosing the ‘slow’ method. That’s procrastination. Whether launching slowly or quickly, your brand launch should be part of a plan that’s fully outlined and ready for the world. If you’re an the precipice of launching a brand, we have a guide on how to launch your rebrand here.
If you’re looking for a rebrand partner, check out our other brand resources, get to know Kaleb a little better here, or book a free call. I’d love to turn your rebrand into a successful case study!