Brands evolve. Markets shift. Competitors get louder. And your branding? It’s starting to feel tired, outdated, boring, samey… (We’ll pretend that's a word.) So, you think, let’s rebrand. A fresh look, a new tone – something to rival the owl or the cereal brand everyone's talking about.
But what about brand loyalty? What about your current customers? What will they think? How will they… feel? Perhaps a recent big cat’s rebrand, which was prematurely revealed this year (and then hastily retracted), in the automotive industry has served as a warning for brands to realise that rebrands shouldn’t just happen to become more ‘modern’. A complete, shiny new rebrand isn’t a quick fix to your branding issues. A rebrand doesn’t change public opinion instantly unless the reason behind it is carefully considered and supported by proper insight and discovery.
Building with purpose
Take one of our branding jobs from last year, for example. Impact Food Group wanted to separate their Independent School offering from their primary branding. They wanted to distinguish their Independent School offering from their main brand, to speak directly to private schools and show they prioritise students' wellbeing.
We engaged with everyone the brand touched. The goal: to ensure every stakeholder felt represented. So, we developed a brand that told a story – a food story. The whole brand was built around traditional book typesetting and a simple, bespoke illustration style that helps tell the brand's story.
The branding was a success, not because of the award-winning illustration or the exceptional food photography (although that helped), but because we created a brand built on the science of emotions.
Emotion drives action
Foundational brand emotion promotes an actionable response. When you’re a B2B brand, and your buyers are only in the market roughly 5% of the time, it’s so important to be remembered. Emotional experiences are memorable experiences, and in a market where a lot of brands are swimming in a sea of sameness, it’s so much more important to create that distinction.
Sometimes, your branding is already deeply ingrained in your business, and you may not necessarily want a rebrand. Still, you have to rebrand, particularly when it turns out your Italian flour brand name translates awkwardly in English.
Our clients, G.R. Wrights and Sons, were competing for dominance in the pizza flour market. Wrights needed to appeal to Italian pizza chefs in the UK – a group loyal to familiar Italian brands. We knew swaying them would be difficult (as they’re a stubborn lot). So what did we do? We played to their emotions… and egos.
Strategic rebranding
Our strategy? Italian pizza chefs buy Italian. In their eyes, Italian is best. Whether it's mozzarella, tomatoes, salami, or even the flour. For over 150 years, Wright’s has been milling some of Britain's best-selling flours. However, their Neapolitan-style ‘00’ pizza flour was being dominated by an Italian competitor in the market.
So, we rebranded their flour as 'Sonata' – an Italian term meaning ‘composition for soloist’. It aligned with their existing range (Bravo, Maestro) and spoke to the individuality of pizza chefs.
Interviews revealed these chefs were a tight-knit, traditional group. Whatever we did, we knew it had to make them at least consider another option. So, we launched the 'Italian Roots, British Made' campaign, drawing parallels between the chefs' heritage and the product's origin, to really stir the emotions. But they're both 'made' in Britain. These Italian chefs have made a life for themselves here. It was a hit.
The takeaway
Every rebrand should start with these questions:
Does the story resonate?
Does it evoke emotion?
What problem are we solving?
What feelings are we aiming to create?
Because that is how you capture an audience, and that’s how you ensure that the risk you take when rebranding has a successful outcome.