Marketing your own company can be a lot like writing your own résumé. At least for me anyway, it is a challenge to have the proper perspective on what to say and how to say it. This is one of the reasons I decided to hire an outside marketing consultant to lead the recent overhaul of our website.
Her very first recommendation was that I needed to “rebrand” my company. My response: Ugh. We had only the year before updated our logo and were happy with it. Rebranding just seemed like one of those trendy marketing buzzwords that marketers like to throw around.
Organizations that undergo rebranding are often brought into the spotlight. After all, garnering attention is kind of the point, right? But that can be a dream or a nightmare, depending on many factors. Sometimes, an organization’s existing logo exposure and recognition from its consumers or clients makes acceptance of a new direction difficult. Positive feedback is certainly not guaranteed. A Business Insider article names some companies that actually became less appealing after a rebrand. That’s the last thing anyone would want after investing money and time into initiating such a substantial change.
I needed some convincing. Our consultant explained that while our existing logo was certainly pleasant enough, it was not helping to tell the story she believed we needed to tell. I reluctantly agreed to at least consider other options.
We began with an extensive review of our company’s culture, our existing clients and our plans for growing our company. Her experience and broader perspective led to some fresh concepts and really opened my eyes to the importance of going beyond just a good logo.
It took a lot of work, but the end result was worth it. She ultimately developed a great logo and website that now helps us tell our story in a very succinct way. The images and the words work together to authentically convey to our clients and prospective clients what we stand for, and what it might be like to work with us.
Just as there are some notable rebranding failures, there have been many successes. At FrontlineCo, we are a service provider, which is of course different than selling items with our logo painted on the product, like Old Spice or Pepsi. That can sometimes make it more challenging to create brand recognition. It’s also why our brand’s story is so important.
Going down the rebranding road isn’t always easy, but in our case, it proved to be worth the effort. It compelled us to think more strategically about what we wanted to be and do as a company and helped us chart a path forward.