by Madi Secareanu | Jun 20, 2012 | Branding, Business Success, Creative, Design
Change is inevitable and as your business changes, so will your brand. With a lot of hard work and dedication to your brand, your customers might come to recognize you, your colours and your voice as much as your products or services. Depending on where your business stands you may consider a rebrand or a brand evolution to breathe new life into your brand and reach new consumers. Rebranding or evolving your brand can:
- make it more current
- develop or improve your brand identity
- increase sales
- differentiate you
In recent years there have been several high profile rebranding and brand evolution exercises. In 2011 Starbucks rebranded to support it’s international go-to-market strategy. Note that they removed their name “Starbucks Coffee” from their logo as they are no longer just about coffee. Pepsi is notorious for rebranding itself at least once a decade and Wal-Mart famously up-grated their brand in 2008. What these three brands have in common is not only their size but the frequency with which they rebrand themselves, and the level of familiarity they’ve maintained while appealing to new consumer generations and demographics. They all also have a substantial and loyal customer base and their iconic status no doubt helped make the transition from the old to the new brand more seamless.
* source: starbucks.com
Be cautious though – if you have a growing brand, one that is building recognition and loyalty – a rebrand might not be the right thing to do. Taking away the elements that make your brand top of mind might hurt more than help your growth. But if you feel that your company is ready and could benefit from a rebrand, consider the following:
Why do you want to rebrand or evolve?
Ask yourself the following questions. Are sales low? Is your brand recognition suffering? Is your image outdated? Do you want to reach a new demographic or target market? Make sure that it’s the right strategy to achieve your goals – a rebrand isn’t just about making your brand look nice. It is a risky endeavor but if done correctly, it can help your business tremendously.
Develop a plan and strategy
How are your going to rebrand or evolve yourself? Is it going to be a complete overhaul, just the logo, the positioning or the tagline? The packaging? Moving your business forward requires a plan and a strategy and it doesn’t end with a new look – a new business strategy might require a rebrand and vice versa.
Don’t forget the past
This is key to retaining brand recognition and customer loyalty. The reason why Pepsi, Wal-Mart and Starbucks have been successful was because they didn’t stray much from the past. They were inspired it but they evolved. The familiar elements were retained and improved.
Focus on the future
You may take some elements of the past with you but remember the reason you’re rebranding in the first place – the future. You want your business to grow with the times. Your rebranding efforts should be able to stand up for at least a decade or two. Don’t go with anything too trendy or language that could be outdated. Keep it fresh yet timeless.
Consider your customers
Ultimately a rebrand or evolution is about the consumer. You can hire the best rebranding experts in the world but if your consumers don’t relate, you’ve make a big mistake. You must consider your costumers. How will they respond to your rebrand? Hold a focus group and have them review your rebranding efforts. Do they resonate? Do they still recognize and relate to your brand? Are they more inclined to buy? Then there are also the new consumers, ones that you could gain by appealing to them through your rebrand, the ones that may not be familiar with your current brand.
Just last year we updated the 3H brand identity that included an evolution of our logo, new typography, updated corporate colours and a website redesign. We kept elements of the past – the purple is our brand but the redesign helped us evolve into the 21st century of brand marketing. Our rebranding efforts don’t stop with us, we have helped clients such as Trispec evolve their brand with a new logo, positioning statement and brand visual, Liquid Nutrition with a rebranded vocabulary and Agropur, updating their Aged Cheddar packaging and website.
What elements do you think are essential to a successful rebrand?
by Madi Secareanu | May 8, 2012 | Advertising, Branding, Business Success, Creative, Interactive
It’s happened to all of us. We’ve been on Facebook posting something on a friend’s wall about a specific interest, like tennis, and the next thing you know Facebook is showing you an ad about tennis rackets. That’s the power of Facebook ads – it lets brands engage and target people based on interests – what they’re talking about and what they like.
Facebook ads can be a very powerful tool to help to generate interest, brand recognition and brand loyalty. It can be an advertiser’s dream – targeting using the information people willingly share with others or enter in their profiles. But it’s important to know the ins and outs of advertising on Facebook before you get started.If you’re planning on launching a Facebook advertising campaign, here are some things to keep in mind before you get going.
- Identify your goals
What do you want to achieve? Is a Fecbook advertising campaign the right strategy? Do you want more likes on your brand page? Do you want to get people to enter a contest? Do you want to drive brand awareness? Do you want to acquire new sales leads? Your objective defines your strategy, so make sure you know what your goals are before launching your campaign. Make sure to establish your objectives prior to launch but be prepared – with Facebook the strategy may vary throughout the duration of the campaign.
- Know your audience
Who do you want to reach – who is your audience? Think about what categories your customers fall into. Not only define them by demographics… dig deeper than that. Knowing your audience well lets’ you target your ads more effectively by tailoring your imagery and your copy to get your target audience’s attention.
- Set your budget
Set a clear budget as you would for all advertising efforts. Identify how much you want to spend daily or during the ad’s entire lifespan and identify your cost per click or cost per thousand impressions bid. How much are you willing to spend? What’s your strategy? Should you initiate a cost per thousand (CPM)or a click through(CTR) campaign.
- Know the rules
Get to know Facebook’s advertising policies and approval process. You’ll find useful information on what you can and cannot advertise, say or show. Knowing the guidelines before hand will lower your ad’s chance of getting disapproved or shut down.
Now, you might be ready to launch your Facebook advertising campaign, but don’t know if it’s going to be a success. It’s always hard to forecast if an ad is going to be successful or not, but if you know your audience well enough and you have a clear objective and a well-defined strategy, you can help improve your ad’s success rate. Here are a few useful tips on creating more effective Facebook ads:
- Copy is key
Develop to-the-point copy that grabs your viewers’ attention. Use a call to action like “Click here!” to help incite your audience to act. Also, use any keywords that you may have if you’ve done your psychographic targeting.
- Draw the eye
Facebook ads that have simple images generally perform better. Use people’s faces where possible as it can help create a more personal connection – but keep it relevant. Avoid using images with hard to read text. Again, try to keep it simple.
- Prepare for landing
Keep your landing page in mind. Where are you sending your audience? Your landing page should reflect what’s being advertised. It may seem a bit obvious but if you’re asking your audience to enter a contest, the landing page should allow them to enter a contest…and so on. Keep it consistent.
- Analyze the performance
The real beauty of Facebook advertising is that you can stop ads and launch new ones…in a blink of an eye! In order to do that though, you need to create many alternative ads in order to test them and analyze which ones work, which don’t and why.
As marketers, we already know the power of Facebook and what it can do for customer engagement and brand loyalty. We know how we can better integrate our brands into our customers’ daily life through Facebook – keep them talking about a brand by asking questions and through constant engagement, stay in front of their eyes and at the top of their mind. Recently, Facebook announced that it would include ads in the news feed – making ads even more integrated in customers’ every day Facebook activities.
What are your thoughts? Do you think Facebook ads are effective– any success stories that you’d like to share?
Click here to follow 3H Communications on Facebook!
by Miriam Hara | Jan 30, 2012 | Advertising, Branding, Business Success
One of my favourite marketing statements: Having a product and not advertising it… is like well… it’s like winking in the dark. You know you’re doing it… but no one else does! Advertising your product delivers awareness and the fact is… awareness sells.
How to build brand awareness?
Get your brand out there! Converse in media (social media, print, radio, tv… or all!), engage consumers by creating brand critical mass and prompting them to go to the store… checking out an online contest or calling in for a meeting. Advertising is essential in the marketing mix of achieving and building brand loyalty. It goes without saying that you can only have brand loyalty if you have brand recognition and consumers try your brand. Advertising is really just about getting your brand and brand position out there… to reach the consumers who hold value for your brand or service. Social Media has evolved the conversation and has provided a new channel, opening a slew of possibilities in achieving brand awareness: interactive ads such as online banners, viral video and mobile apps. Your website is at the hub of all activity, whether derived from traditional or new media. All this ‘new’ is still cradled with basic marketing sense: the message still must be clear, the audience identified, the strategy must be focused and the objectives have to be defined.
Brand awareness initiatives along with a deep innate understanding of psychographics are the basis of how to market a brand, service or company. It’s imperative that your target audience identify with your brand, so that it becomes part of them, of their culture and resonates with their lifestyle. Simply stated… your brand needs to show up!
