4 ways an implementation partner can influence your rebrand’s success

Rebranding is an all-eyes-on-marketing undertaking. And as a marketing leader, of course you want to put together a perfect implementation plan that considers every little detail.

But how will you know if your rebrand strategy has, indeed, taken all the necessary considerations into account? Does your plan account for every contingency? Have you budgeted appropriately? Did you allocate adequate internal and external resources to comprehensively roll out your brand’s new identity?

The truth is that you don’t know what you don’t know. So the best way to answer these questions — and the many others that are sure to crop up — is to lean on an implementation partner to guide you through these four fundamental aspects of rebranding.

1. Accurately assess your rebrand’s scope and the resources you need to implement it

When rebrand implementations fail, it’s most often due to budgeting issues, inconsistent or incomplete asset conversion, or the project losing momentum. Why does this happen? Rebranding is complex, and it’s easy to underestimate the time and effort it requires.

That’s why it’s absolutely critical to begin the rebranding process by assessing your project’s size, scope, and organizational impact.

To do this, BrandActive will help you:

• Conduct a thorough inventory of your branded assets. If you’ve already begun this process, we’ll lead you through a gap analysis to ensure every single asset is accounted for.
• Review your launch plans and prioritize which assets you’ll need to convert prior to launch.
• Evaluate the resources required to roll out your rebrand. This includes training and empowering internal workgroup leads to oversee implementation efforts in their areas. It also involves identifying external resources to supplement your internal team’s bandwidth.
• Identify all the areas you will need to address, from best practices for aligning stakeholders to developing timelines, scenario models and options that allow for fiscally responsible decision making
• Help your internal staff identify hidden risks and create process efficiencies

Once this work is complete, we’ll prepare high-level analysis reports that you can use to gain approval and buy-in from your executive team and other key stakeholders.

2. Conduct scenario planning to make informed rebranding decisions

There’s more than one way to successfully implement a rebrand. But it’s often difficult to know which approach is best-suited to your organization’s needs. Weighing your options in light of your organizational goals and limitations is key to making strategic decisions that are also fiscally sound.

That’s why we view scenario planning as an integral part of the rebranding process. It’s essential to think through your options and compare the outcomes and ramifications of choosing one approach over another.

BrandActive can lead you through a variety of exercises to get to the heart of your organizational priorities. For example, we might explore your tolerance level for seeing your legacy brand in the market post-launch. Are you comfortable encountering your previous identity for 12 months? 18 months? Two years? If so, you can extend your rebrand’s timeline and spread out its impact on your budget and on your internal team. However, if your CEO wants a consistent brand experience from day one, that mandate will have a trickle-down effect on the rest of your implementation plans.

Each scenario you model comes with its own set of pros and cons. An experienced partner can help analyze each one to chart out the best course of action.

3. Develop accurate financial projections for your rebrand

Rebranding comes with a hefty price tag. As such, it’s important for you to think through the financial impact this change will have on your organization. That’s true whether you’re implementing a rebrand in the midst of an economic boom or doing so in spite of a market downturn.

Thankfully, there are a number of ways to budget effectively and ease the burden to your organization’s bottom line.

Consider your budgeting options

Your CFO will expect you to create multi-year financial projections that make wise use of your organization’s CapEx and OpEx policies.

Don’t worry if this is unfamiliar terrain. BrandActive can help you:

• Identify the large-scale expenses to capitalize. Capital budgets typically remain available to you across multiple fiscal years. This provides much-needed flexibility, especially if you encounter supply chain challenges and labor shortages that affect your ability to adhere to your planned time frame.
• Project how much it will cost to convert your branded assets in year one and in future years.
• Operationalize as many rebranding expenses as possible (e.g., replace packaging when you run out rather than converting it all immediately).
• Create contingency plans for how to handle everything from inflation-based cost increases to unexpected decreases in the budgetary dollars available to you.
• Create an ROI payback model

Rationalize branded assets to reduce costs

A large portion of your rebrand implementation budget will be devoted to converting your branded assets to your organization’s new identity. And you might initially plan to automatically update everything as a matter of course.

However, you could significantly reduce your costs by:

• Sunsetting or retiring outdated, irrelevant, and redundant assets.
• Digitizing printed collateral, which has the added benefit of making your rebrand more sustainable.
• Examining your vendor contracts to renegotiate terms, evaluate quality, and streamline requisition processes.

Creating accurate financial projections and timelines can feel daunting. But BrandActive has helped hundreds of clients navigate this process while facing a variety of pressures and constraints. As a result, we know which levers to pull in order to maximize your rebrand’s impact and stay within your desired timeline and budget.

4. Roll out every facet of your rebrand

You’ve assessed your project scope, modeled out a variety of implementation scenarios, and gained budgetary approvals. Now it’s time to bring your new brand to life.

BrandActive plays an active role in managing your rebrand’s rollout in order to reduce the burden on your internal team. As such, we’ll take the lead in developing a multi-phase, integrated implementation plan that becomes a shared blueprint for the entire team to follow.

It’s important to note that there are certain areas where we’ll need your internal team’s involvement and support. To minimize the burden on your time, we’ll establish clear guidelines from the start that lay out the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved in the project.

Convert your branded assets according to your desired timeline and quality level

Your branded assets are the most visible piece of your rebrand. As such, it’s crucial to get this part of the process right.

BrandActive possesses deep knowledge about the best way to convert every type of branded asset. We’ll help you devise a timely, methodical, and quality-focused strategy for transitioning everything your brand touches, including:

• Signage and wayfinding
• Fleet vehicles
• Branded environments
• Website and digital channels
• Branded apparel
• ID badges
• Marketing collateral
• Forms and documentation

Along the way, we’ll provide real-time reports that enable you to see the percent to which your rebrand is complete and how far we still have to go.

Shore up your marketing and brand operations to ensure ongoing consistency

Rebranding is the perfect opportunity to review the guidelines and processes that will inform your team’s brand and marketing efforts over time. After all, when it comes to your brand, you can’t afford to set it and forget it. You need to establish clear expectations for what it means to represent your brand accurately day after day.

BrandActive can help you:

• Create clear, documented guidelines to bolster brand consistency. 
• Optimize the tools and technology you’ll use to deliver your brand across all your digital channels.
• Establish easy-to-follow, efficient processes that extend beyond the rebrand.

Your rebrand isn’t fully complete until you get your marketing and brand operations functioning like a well-oiled machine.

Implement your rebrand on time and within budget

We understand that rebranding can feel like a Herculean effort to marketers who try to go it alone. The level of preparation and planning required can feel overwhelming at best and fear-inducing at worst.

BrandActive knows what it takes to reach a successful conclusion on time and within budget. Simply put, we won’t let you fail. In our 24 years of implementing rebrands for the world’s largest companies, we’ve never encountered a scenario we couldn’t handle. You can rely on us to help you deliver the best-in-class rebrand your organization deserves.

So if you’re ready to remove the guesswork and make your rebrand the resounding success you want it to be, just reach out. We’d love to hear from you.