3 Lessons Learned During a Company Rebrand
Kate Holden, an Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) member, is president of the EO Winnipeg chapter and serves on the EO Canada Board as Canada's Member Products Director. Kate is a philanthropist, business leader, and founder of The Pourium, a fast-growing retail and e-commerce wine business. Kate shared what she learned after a recent company rebrand.
The company I've owned, scaled and loved for 15 years just underwent a significant rebrand. We changed it all: from the company name to our team members' titles, the transformation was all-encompassing.
It was a major endeavor. Not because we have thousands of stakeholders but because the company's former brand never truly represented who I am as an entrepreneur.
As a founder, it's normal to want your company to embody your unique perspective; I never quite felt that mine shined through. The company name included the last name of its previous owners. As years passed, the name and brand identity began to clash with both the company we were becoming and with me.
Rebranding is a process, a journey, and an introspective experience at the core of your personal and professional identity. No matter what size, industry, or vertical, if you're thinking about rebranding, these three lessons might help you.
Lesson 1: Involve your team
A brand is not just a corporate "image" to position your company in the marketplace. A brand is about values, philosophies, beliefs and feelings--all of which are deeply human in nature. Ultimately, a brand is about people.
Seth Godin, marketer and author, would agree: "A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer's decision to choose one product or service over another."
In Godin's definition, a brand is a holistic collaboration of deeply human experiences--including memories, stories, and relationships.
Accordingly, I involved every team member in the rebrand, from name ideation to brainstorming which colors felt like "us" to what their new job titles should be. In the process, I was reminded how deeply our teams--especially those who are customer-facing--understand our company's essence. Often they have amazing insights, but as business owners, we rarely listen as closely as we should.
I didn't just include the team; I empowered them to craft their revamped role, job description, scorecard, and KPIs. Each new role tackles three to five key deliverables tied to our strategic plan.
Their revamped roles fit perfectly with our new brand philosophy: we added an Innovation Director, an Experience Director, and a Concierge. We collectively decided, "This is how we want to show up for customers and for each other."
Your team embodies the brand, and they will be your biggest brand ambassadors. Bring them into the process.
Lesson 2: A rebrand is both external and internal
We often think of a corporate rebrand as changing "external" things like logos, fonts, colors, and brand experiences. I realized that a rebrand requires deep introspection to thoroughly understand what your company--and, by extension, yourself and your people--are all about. It was far from superficial.
I worked through critical questions:
"Who are we?"
"How do we want to show up?"
"How do we want our customers to feel?"
"What is our true purpose?"
After weeks of strategy sessions, it became clear that a new brand meant a new "everything" on the internal side. We transformed our core values, mission, purpose, organizational structure, operational principles, culture, and more.
The result? A new brand that feels holistic because it covers both who we are on the outside and who we are on the inside. Our company has evolved, grown, and become something so much bigger than when we started. Beyond that, our new brand is deeply authentic and reflects us at every level--body, mind, and soul.
Lesson 3: Bring customers along on the journey
Perhaps my biggest fear around a rebrand is confusing or downright alienating customers.
That fear was real: I had inherited the previous owner's namesake as part of the company's name, so I felt nervous about losing customers who felt connected to the brand's history.
I didn't just want to retain clients; I wanted to excite them about the new (real) version of our company.
The plan started internally. I made it clear to the team that engaging our customers in the new brand was paramount. We crafted a communications plan to ensure all customer-facing messaging was aligned.
Then, we brought customers along for the ride. We sent each B2B customer a gift with a note explaining the rebrand, and that while our name was different, we hadn't changed. We shared our new core values, mission, and reinspired purpose. Customers loved the personalized touch and felt they were part of our journey.
We held a VIP launch party for each customer segment, celebrating the change and inviting them to join the celebration. They embraced our new identity: sending notes of congratulations and sharing the news on social media.
We enriched the buying experience for B2C customers: A stylish website redesign made it easier to find the products they needed, and upgraded POS systems were more user-friendly.
Our brand always talked about celebrating life's most important occasions and empowering customers along their wine journey--now we are finally living it!