Tag Archive: Creative
Rebrand. Refresh. Rebrand. Refresh. It’s not easy figuring out exactly how your brand should be looking, should be feeling, or should be sounding.
Blumilk is on hand to help you to map out where your brand is now, where you would like it to be and exactly what steps you need to get there.
Rebrand or Refresh?
It’s a problem as old as time. The thought of going through an entire rebrand can be daunting so what if you don’t have to? There are lots of ways that you can better connect with your target audience while achieving a tangible financial result.
The difference between a rebrand and refresh is that the former is a fundamental change to an organisation, for example, changing your product or service offering, restructuring or merging with another business, or perhaps your brand is stuck in a scene of Stranger Things and gets to work on its Chopper bike?
There are brands from only one or two years ago that are already starting to look dated.
These are all elements that require an entire overhaul of the brand in a way that a brand refresh would struggle to achieve.
What is a brand refresh?
It may just be a case of sharpening up your brand’s messaging, visual assets or tone of voice? Except, how do you know exactly what it is that you need to refresh?
Remember, your marketplace and audience are constantly moving, growing, and changing and so, it’s absolutely essential that your brand moves with them.
If your company and brand fails to keep pace with the evolving marketplace, you potentially leave your organisation wide open to competitors who are there to step into your shoes.
Take a look at Starbuck’s brand refresh below. The logo itself has evolved over the decades but still manages to hold onto its iconic Siren and ‘Starbucks Green’.
“As we evolve to meet beautifully diverse customers all over the world, our brand has evolved too,” Starbucks explains. “Here we introduce a fresh new design system that maintains the core elements of our brand while keeping our customers’ experience central to creative expression.
“To achieve this, we’re thoughtfully incorporating beautiful, expressive moments with calm confidence in ways that are optimistic, joyful and recognisably Starbucks,”
A quick once over of your brand to check for originality, sincerity, understanding of audiences, value, visibility and consistency is a great starting block in ensuring that your brand is where it needs to be. If you’re lacking any of the above, it’s time to think about your brand and how it can live up to its responsibility of standing out in your chosen marketplaces.
What is a Rebrand?
A rebrand is something that takes your brand and completely transforms it. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse – so ensure that you either have vast amount of experience in rebranding established brands or collaborate with an agency who knows their rebrand onions.
A rebrand is something that is incredibly easy to get wrong and incredibly hard to get right. And don’t forget, your entire organisation’s success could depend on this exact stage in your evolution.
Take Tropicana’s 2009 attempt…
‘The new packaging design was rejected and criticised by the majority of Tropicana’s consumers. The launch of the new packaging was indeed such a failure that Tropicana had to drop it to come back to the original version of the packaging.’ (The Branding Journal)
That being said, it is absolutely essential that you keep your brand looking, feeling and sounding fresh and while a rebrand comes with a slightly higher risk factor than a refresh, it can propel you to the lofty heights of business success.
Take the Consumer Council for Water rebrand that Blumilk created.
The brand has been well received in the industry and internally at CCW. With a modern new look, the brand is growing from strength to strength and is growing in recognition. The brand is cohesive across all platforms as well as colourful, friendly and inviting for consumers.
Amanda Caton, Executive Head of Communications said recently: “Cannot recommend you enough! Look at the amazing job you did… you should include a “before” so people understand the difference you made to our brand! From our very first conversation, Blumilk have been a joy to work with and have provided us with a level of service above and beyond our expectations.
“They instinctively understood our organisation’s needs, helped us overcome several barriers with determination and positivity, and provided indispensable advice and guidance when we needed it most. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that without Blumilk’s energy, enthusiasm, tenacity – and commitment to providing an excellent service – our project wouldn’t have got this far.”
Whether you’re thinking a rebrand or refresh for your brand, it might be a great idea for you drop us a line or give us a call here.
Blumilk faces brand challenges every day so our clients don’t have to.
Whether you’re a new business yet to decide on a logo or a global organisation looking for brand consistency, the Blumilk Dummies Guide to Branding can help.
A common misconception of branding is that people often think that all it concerns is a business’s logo and colour scheme, but branding is so much more. Yes, it does involve your logo and colour scheme, but branding focuses hugely on who you are, what you stand for, and what your service user or consumer experiences during their interaction with your brand, too.
Strong brands tend to delve deeper than their label and consider every stage where engagement occurs, from billboard advertising to social media posts, company vehicle livery to product packaging.
Organisations that take the time to develop their brand understand that their brand should live everywhere.
This handy Dummies Guide to Branding will show you how you can create and manage a strong brand that your staff will be proud of and clients remember.
What even is a brand?
Your brand is arguably one of your organisation’s most important assets and effectively sets you apart from your competitors. Your difference and how you communicate that – that’s your brand.
We’ve mentioned how your brand goes beyond your label, and that’s because to have a strong brand, you will give consideration beyond your name, tagline, logo, or symbol and focus too on the overall user experience your client encounters when interacting with your business.
And branding, what’s branding?
To develop a strong brand identity, your business will have to embark on a journey of self-discovery. Yes, really. Lick your lips because this is where it gets tasty. This is the stage where you uncover opinions and perceptions relating to your brand, some you may have never even considered before.
To further understand these opinions and perceptions, it’s essential to get in touch with your client base and business’s beating heart.
You’ll need to be prepared to carry out some ‘pre-branding exercises,’ including research and analysis.
These exercises will help you to develop and apply a distinctive series of features and benefits to your business to enable your target audience to begin a process of brand recognition (see branding buzzwords below).
As a branding agency, we’d be forgiven for saying that it’s one of the most important processes that your business will go through, but don’t just take our word for it.
In a recent global Nielsen survey, branding was the deciding factor for consumers when making a purchase decision. Almost 60% of shoppers said they prefer to buy from brands they’re familiar with, and 21% said they purchased a product because they liked the look and feel of the brand.
Want your business to be memorable? It’s very easy to get your branding wrong and quite hard to get it right, so if you want your business to be remembered for all of the right reasons, you must get your ‘pre-branding exercises’ right.
By taking the time to understand your target audience and how they wish to interact with your brand, you’ll find that your branding will support your marketing efforts with added consumer recognition giving a considerable amount of impact.
Correct branding also brings an incredible amount of pride to your employees, often seen as one of the lesser important reasons behind a lengthy branding campaign.
That being said, a strong brand gives your employees confidence, which will shine through to your client base and the advantage of creating a happy, reputable, and highly thought of workplace.
STRONG BRANDING + CONFIDENT WORKFORCE = BUSINESS SUCCESS
Branding Buzzwords
We’re not going to fill you with a bunch of jargon but give you the top branding buzzwords you need to know as a business. They’ll also help you to understand further the value of getting your branding right.
Brand Awareness
How familiar the general public and your target audience are with your brand is Brand Awareness. If your brand awareness is high, you’re doing a great job. The greater your brand awareness, the greater the level of confidence your target audience will have when considering a purchase from you rather than if your brand is new to them.
Great examples of strong brand awareness are Northumberland County Council and their synonymous red and gold logo together with Northumbria Water and their date-proof font used in their logo.
Brand Extension
Once your primary brand is well-established and is revisited and maintained often, you may want to consider brand extensions. Brand extensions are where brands branch out into additional markets with innovative products and services.
Think Apple when they diversified from computers to MP3 players and phones or Dyson vacuums using their iconic technology to develop hair and hand dryers.
Brand Extensions will also help you increase your brand awareness and are an excellent way for businesses looking for additional revenue streams.
Brand Identity
Your brand identity can be defined as the personality of your brand. How do you want to be perceived in the outside world? Clear, concise, and approachable like Affinity Water, ready for an adventure in keeping with The Alnwick Garden, or user-defined and helpful like Western Power Distribution?
Why considering your brand’s identity, it’s best to think about how your users or consumers will feel about you when they see your logo or after they have interacted with your brand.
Brand Management
OK, you’ve worked with a creative agency to produce a dynamic and powerful brand. It looks how you want it to look, and it makes your target audience feel the way you want them to feel, but what next?
The marketing world is fickle, much like consumers, and thanks to The Internet of Things, the world is changing every nanosecond.
You mustn’t allow all of your hard branding work to go to waste by regularly maintaining your brand with this in mind. Whether we’re talking tangible elements such as your colour pallet and packaging or the intangible, including your brand awareness and identity.
The strongest brands require consistent care and attention.
Brand Recognition
Close your eyes and think of golden text on a rich purple background. Next, think about a huge M on a red background. If you immediately thought of Cadburys and McDonalds, that’s brand recognition.
It isn’t just font or colours that we recognise in brands; it can be a jingle (Go Compare), a cute Meerkat called Serg (Compare The Market), or even how the brand is spoken: Money Supermaaaaaarket, anyone?
I’m sure you’ll be able to think of hundreds more, but all of the above highlight a significant point where brand recognition is concerned. In the densely populated and super-competitive money market, it’s brand recognition is more important than ever. It’s evident that the companies, even when their industry is quite formal by nature, have taken the human, perhaps sometimes comedic route with their brands.
Fancy testing your knowledge on brand recognition? Take the Logo Quiz by Business Insider.
Brand Trust
You believe in your brand, but does your target audience? It’s a tricky one because brand loyalty is built on trust, and without it, you’re not going to succeed. You need to ask yourself whether you can and consistently deliver on all of your brand’s promises?
If the answer is no, you need to up your delivery or simply don’t make false promises.
Brand Valuation
The value of a business is far more than just bricks and mortar. We’re talking consumer perception. In short, how strong is your brand when you consider all of the buzzwords above?
A brand that can demonstrate that they have a powerful identity and high levels of awareness in their chosen marketplace can be considered invaluable to shareholders as well as investors and future buyers.
In Summary
It’s all about your target audience. Dispose of the naivety that you know exactly what people want in a brand; the only way that brands will realise real success is by getting into your target audience and your organisation’s heart and soul. Ask uncomfortable questions, prepare yourself for uncomfortable answers, and use this knowledge to position yourself in your chosen marketplace and ahead of your competitors.
Are you ready to embark on your brand’s journey of self-discovery? We’d love to join you. Get in touch with us on 0191 232 4401 or email info@blumilk.com.
At Blumilk, we have been working on a number of exciting projects that involves the Branding for the Utilities Sector.
Recently, we have been collaborating very closely with @western_power_distribution, one of the UKs biggest DNO’s.
As the main electricity provider for the Midlands, South Wales and South West and boasting exceptional service provision, it was imperative that this branding for the utilities sector matched the brand ethos through and through.
We really enjoy working with their team and are thrilled that we have been able to produce some great work for them. The utilities sector is one of our greatest passions as a company and we are very excited about the future projects we have to come…
If you are interested in how Blumilk can assist with your utility sector branding, please get in touch with us.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Being creative market leaders in some industries seems like an impossible task. Promoting and branding your products and services when they aren’t ‘sexy’ is no marketer’s dream. However, there are ways to make yourself stand out in these sectors. We’re talking to you, businesses in the utilities sector…
The services you provide are fairly in-depth, technical, and for the most part, quite difficult to communicate. There are always regulations that need to be adhered to, stakeholders you need to communicate with, the public to be informed, and targets to meet. Getting your message across in an engaging, creative way can be tricky, so we’ve pulled together a few quick tips to help you tackle your utilities branding:
- Know your Audience
Your audience changes very regularly; one day you might be speaking to a member of parliament in regard to renewable energy solutions, the next day you might be speaking to a family of four advising them on the best way to manage a bill.
You’ll need to adapt your style and language for each, employing the best ways to speak to them. An easy assumption to make is that you need to be really technical, but this is not always best practice. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that everyone will understand your product or service.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Improving your NPS score (the measurement of a customer’s willingness to recommend your product or service) year on year should be a major goal. Keep asking yourself “how likely are we to be recommended?” in the back of your mind with everything that you do and let your initiatives grow from this.
- Communicate the basics
Do not over complicate things. On a day-to-day basis you will not always be discussing technical issues such as a DNS to DSO strategy (power now coming from multiple sources rather than singular). For the most part, the public doesn’t know what you actually do or on some occasions know that you exist, start by educating them on this, and allow the conversations to develop from this base.
- Create Personality
You are working in a very technical environment; however, this does not mean that you have to be cold and uninviting. All companies are built by people, so it’s important that the personality of your business is conveyed to the customer. By doing this, they will be more engaged and perceptive to your brand. Allow them to see the people they’ll be interacting with.
- Consider different platforms
“It’s the way we’ve always done it” won’t serve you well. Change things up; look at using new platforms and mediums to speak to your audience. A younger generation have become more prevalent and are in need of your services expecting multiple communication channels. Find out where they spend their time online and ensure that your message is always being heard.
- Don’t settle for ticking a box
Show that you go above and beyond for your customers and stakeholders. You need to demonstrate that you’ve listened to feedback and that you have reacted accordingly. Showing this adaptability and championing positive change is without a doubt the best way to improve your NPS score. For example, you may be required to commission an annual report, find out from the previous year’s documents what people responded to best/didn’t respond to, and use this for growth. The longer you can hold someone’s attention the more likely it is that your information will be absorbed, keep this simple and visually appealing.
- Identify your weaknesses
Do what you do well and do it well, there is no need to cover every single base. The utilities sector is a fast-paced, ever-changing environment. If you don’t have a marketing department, outsource this function. If you have a design team who keep producing the same looking content, seek out a second opinion.
Blumilk are a multi-award-winning brand, reputation and campaigns agency for the utilities sector and has been helping solve business challenges for over 20 years. At Blumilk, we specialise in strategic brand, campaign, regulatory, and overall reputation projects for clients within the utilities sector and are driven by a team of world-class creatives and strategists. Together we generate solutions that make a real difference for our clients.
If you are in the utility sector and want to ensure that your communications are engaging your audience, or just need advice on the best ways to meet your goals we are always available for a chat. Please contact 0191 249 8384 or info@blumilk.com
