The strategy and identity of a brand are its essence, setting the tone for its further interactions, perceptions, and market position. But what happens when this identity needs to change? Rebranding, although representing a journey with many transformations, is also a significant investment, both in terms of time and resources.
In this blog, we address a frequently asked question from our clients about the complexity of rebranding, offering a comprehensive guide through the factors that influence the cost of rebranding. We will also explain why brand strategy is important and what value it creates for the brand.
Whether you are a startup at the beginning of your business journey, considering refreshing your brand, or an experienced enterprise contemplating a complete transformation, this article provides insights that clarify the strategic aspects of rebranding. Dive deeper to discover the roadmap to successful brand transformations.
Several Common Reasons Why Companies Opt for Rebranding
There are numerous reasons why companies undertake rebranding. The first and most important is updating the current brand identity and aligning it with market needs. The brand identity visually, audibly, and experientially represents the company’s values, mission, and personality.
It can become outdated, inconsistent, or irrelevant as more competitors emerge and market needs change. In such cases, rebranding helps in adjusting the brand positioning and developing a relevant identity that resonates well with the interests of the target market.
Another reason is updating brand architecture, which refers to how the company organizes its brands, products, and services. This helps companies streamline their brand architecture and create a more consistent and coherent brand portfolio.
We’ve written about signs that indicate the need for rebranding in one of our blogs, so it would be useful before proceeding further to read about when it’s time to engage a branding agency.
Direct Costs of Rebranding
Rebranding is a comprehensive process that significantly impacts a company’s brand performance. It involves a complete review and adjustment of the brand identity, strategy, and architecture to create a new, modern, relevant brand that resonates in the market. Although rebranding can bring significant benefits, such as increased customer loyalty and higher revenues, it also comes with direct costs that need to be considered.
Strategy Costs
This part of the costs is divided into three categories, each of which is a separate item in the budget. Before we delve into this further, it’s important to remind ourselves why brand strategy is important. Let’s now see what these categories are…
Brand Analysis: Involves a detailed analysis of the current brand positioning, brand recognition, and awareness. The goal is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the existing brand and determine areas for improvement. Brand audit costs vary depending on the scope of the project and the depth of detail required.
Retail Analysis: Retail analysis examines the company’s presence in retail. This includes store layout, product display, competitive set, and customer experience. These analyses aim to identify weaknesses in retail channels and then build a strong presence. Unlike brand analysis costs, retail analysis costs depend on the number of stores.
Competitive Analysis: Finally, competitive analysis helps the company conduct a detailed analysis of competitors and find areas for improvement compared to competitors in the market. Competitive analysis costs can be very high compared to the first two because they involve a high level of detail in strategy and time.
Design Costs
During the rebranding project, the company must conduct various types of redesigns. Here’s a table summarizing what needs to be done with different design elements:
- Logo redesign; read about how much a logo costs,
- Redesign of business cards and various business materials,
- Website redesign; read about the cost of website development,
- Redesign of marketing materials.
Digital Costs
The company also needs to allocate a significant portion of the budget for its digital resources because redesign costs can escalate quickly, depending on the digital channel in question. Some typical digital costs associated with changes include updating profiles on social media, where a complete redesign is also done, then on newsletters, email memorandum appearance, and so on.
Indirect Costs of Rebranding
Indirect costs include lost productivity and other costs not directly related to design during the rebranding process. These costs can be significant and have a major impact on the success of rebranding. It’s important to consider both direct and indirect costs when creating a rebranding budget. Understanding indirect costs ensures successful rebranding.
Marketing Costs
Creating a marketing strategy involves several costs, including issuing press releases, updating social media, investing in optimization, and paid advertising. These costs can vary depending on the nature of each segment. For example, the costs of issuing press releases will largely depend on frequency. Similarly, social media marketing campaigns can incur high costs; the same applies to ads and SEO.
Loss of Brand Value for the Company
When a company no longer sees value in a certain brand, it can lead to reduced brand recognition and less customer loyalty. To avoid these risks, partnering with a reliable rebranding agency is crucial. Such an agency will carefully and strategically manage the rebranding process, taking into account the brand’s history and existing customer base. Additionally, they can preserve customer loyalty by effectively and transparently communicating the rebranding process with current customers.
Building a Brand that Guarantees the Best Results
If you need rebranding that will deliver results, we can help. Titan Design, among other things, specializes in brand development. Still, we are also an agency that researches, designs, and tests all solutions to achieve the best product performance on the shelves. Schedule a meeting to discuss your project with our team.
