Why your competitors don’t want you to rebrand

Many visual brand identities are legacy, often dating back from the time they were created. This can happen with family businesses passed down to new generations, following company reboots and mergers. These businesses often find themselves out of date and touch with modern buyers, losing relevance and importance.

This is fairly common, across the board. Often established and successful businesses find themselves at the cusp of becoming great. But channeling the current status quo is unlikely to move the dial – and if so only marginal business improvements follow.

Following a settling in phase, the newbie owner / Marketing Director sets up camp, learns the ropes and begins their own quest – how will they run the business and put their stamp on it? Then there’s that moment of realisation (we’ve seen it many times): “We can’t compete”. “We’ve dated.” “Our brand has become irrelevant and out of touch.” “We need change.”

No one remembers the caterpillar, but most can tell you the name of their favourite butterfly.

From big commercial businesses to small independents, becoming irrelevant and out-dated can be the difference between success and failure.

Creating something meaningful and own-able is where we come in and help become a reality. That’s where the journey begins.

We sit down with our clients and we listen. History, ambitions, competitors, challenges, details that will build a picture of something unique and, once put together into a cohesive brand story.

It’s not about sitting along side your competitors, it’s about taking you ahead of them; leading the charge and showcasing why your business is better, why you do things different and ultimately why your customers should choose you – and not them. It’s a dance, a fight a song… a sonnet. Finding that tangible difference, that relevance between you and them, is what it’s about.

Our goal isn’t to win awards for design that often only designers understand, that would be flippant and foolish. Something cool and original isn’t always the best tact (just think about Jaguars new brand move, and how wrong that went). Our goal is to make our clients shine – to stand up and be counted, to help build a framework for success and something they can truly believe in and for their people to get behind.

For us, this is the true measure of brand success and we believe in it.

And trust us, when you get it right your competitors won’t thank you for it.