3 common myths about rebranding that need breaking down

Recently, I’d made some changes to my website. I’m always tweaking things here and there (can’t help it, it’s the perfectionist in me), but the changes I made over the last week or so were a bit more involved because of adjustments I made to my brand identity.

It’s all been part of a larger rebranding where I’m focusing in more and more on my ideal clients and how to attract them. Since making the changes, I thought it would be a good opportunity to bring up and dispel 3 myths about rebranding that people often believe. Here are some reasons why rebranding doesn’t have to be a daunting headache waiting to happen.

Rebranding Myth #1: Rebranding is always a huge undertaking

Like I said, I updated my brand identity in a little over a week. And it’s not like I was chained to my computer slaving over it for ten days straight. I still kept up with client work. Hung out with friends. Watched episodes of Orange is the New Black.

A rebrand doesn’t have to be a complete nightmare that takes months where your business is incapacitated and you have to pause everything.

Of course, it will depend a lot on the size of your business and how much you want to change. But the thing I want to make clear is this: you don’t have to change everything. There are a lot of parts to your brand and while some parts might need fixing, other parts might be doing great!

So the first step to rebranding should be to review and analyse your brand so you have a clear idea of what is and isn’t working. Having a brand strategy session is a great way to evaluate the current position of your brand, and see if there are things to adjust.

In my case, I drilled down on who my ideal client is which lead to the re-writing of some of my website copy. I also updated the design of my brand identity slightly — specifically, my brand colour palette, typography and images I use. And that leads me to the second myth.

Rebranding Myth #2: To rebrand, you have to update your logo

I love my logo icon. It’s loosely built around my initials, but in a very abstract, hidden kind of way that isn’t at all obvious. It has a folded, tactile appearance which hints at paper and printed things, but is also very geometric and looks great on screen. It’s colour and form is flexible, distinctive, and memorable.

I decided to re-design my brand identity because I felt like there were aspects that just weren’t working for me anymore. For example, the old navy colour I used felt too corporate — a link to the type of clients I had worked with a lot in the past but didn’t represent my ideal client of today. So decided I needed to change that, along with a few other things.

However, one thing I definitely wasn’t going to touch was my logo.

My logo had a certain amount of brand equity attached to it, like on Pinterest where it makes it easy to spot pins linking to my blog posts. I often see the same people re-pin my pins over and over, and the fact that they can easily recognise my stuff probably plays a big role. Creating a brand new logo might be fun, but it would also mean starting from scratch in some cases.

Sometimes a total change and completely fresh start is exactly what a business needs. Other times, it’s just a matter of smaller adjustments.

So I kept my logo, and also the ruby-red colour that is part of its recognisability. My new brand identity is all the more stronger for it.