Your brand creates the first impression customers have of your business. We all know its importance, but getting it right isn’t easy. For some it’s more complicated than others. Perhaps you’ve grown by acquisition, incorporating new companies into an ever-expanding empire? Maybe one of your sub-brands is so strong it leaves the others in its shadow? Or it could be that your brand is just a bit old-fashioned and doesn’t reflect what you do anymore.
Here we share examples and advise on each of these issues…
Refreshing a heritage brand
The Press Association has been around since 1868, but recently the company decided to undergo a brand refresh. “We celebrated our 150th anniversary last year and felt the brand didn’t reflect the modern dynamic business that we are now,” explains Marc Koskela, head of marketing at what is now called PA Media.
The rebrand was also prompted by a long-term strategy to diversify its business and reduce its reliance on traditional customers within the print media sector. Press Association’s parent company PA Group changed its name to PA Media Group, while Press Association became PA Media. Other already PA-branded businesses within the group – PA Training and PA Images also received new visual identities.
A challenge for heritage brands is to modernise without obliterating the trust and reputation built up and attached to the brand. For Marc, this meant balancing the old with the new.
A new hexagonal logo was designed, incorporating both old and new brand characteristics such as collaboration, accuracy, innovation, creativity, speed, immediacy, fairness and balance. Hints towards the old brand were also included within the wider aesthetic. “PA is the industry shorthand for the agency. One of the brands [PA Training] has also retained the red colour. Those were some of the nods back to our heritage,” says Marc.
The sub-brands had individual identities that needed consideration. With a lot of research into the specific markets they operate in, these brands were aligned but differentiated. For example, teal was used as the colour for PA Images, because it’s an under-used colour within that market.
PA Media Group’s other sub-brands – the agencies Globelynx, Sticky Content, StreamAMG, TNR, and EBS – were left untouched. “There was a feeling that they all work well within their own markets and they reflect who they are today and the objectives they have. So that wasn’t something we looked at changing,” Marc says.
Uniting multiple existing brands
The aim of uniting Unlimited’s 27 individual agency brands was to simplify things for both customers and staff. “We had to align because no one wants to talk through 27 agencies at a group meeting,” says group CMO Sarah Shilling. “The rebrand signalled us moving forward. It was a matter of simplifying, signposting our expertise, and giving it real clarity. It’s been so much easier for people internally to understand the breadth of our offering, and communicate that with our clients.”
Unlimited chose to restructure in April 2018 by segmenting its 27 agencies into seven pillars – health, customer engagement, brand, digital transformation, B2B and technology, CRM, and insight and research.
This has now grown to eight, with the recent acquisition of data and analytics company Realise Unlimited. Each expertise is represented by one agency, with Nelson Bostock Unlimited leading the B2B pillar.
Customers can work with a single discipline, but also have the option to bring in other expertise such as insight and research. If the client needs a more integrated solution, then the group can create a team who work across agencies to deliver this. Sarah says the visual and structural alignment enables the group “to remain client-centric and provide agile solutions”.
The group’s sub-brands retained their names, adding ‘Unlimited’ to the end. The agencies are also united with the Unlimited shield used within their logos. “There’s a lot of equity in the brands we have in our portfolio. So it made sense to keep them very distinct, yet join them together with the Unlimited name,” Sarah says.
Driving global brand consistency
The challenge for accountancy and business advisory network Baker Tilly was to drive brand consistency across its 125 member firms in 145 different countries. Internal research found only 17-20% of those firms were trading under the Baker Tilly brand, with a further 60% using some variation of it.
Brand manager Jo Luck realised the value of bringing all the members under one global trading title, namely less confusion among customers and a greater sense of togetherness among employees.
A new visual identity was developed, with logo, colours, fonts, imagery and applications all updated. Crucial to this was the implementation of a brand management platform, which allows staff around the world to access brand assets.
The result has been 70% of member firms now operating under the global brand, with only a few firms left to join, mainly due to local regulations or ongoing transition periods.
There’s also been a positive knock-on effect for marketing. Previously firms ran their marketing campaigns independently, while others didn’t even have a marketing function. “Now we’re able to invest in and undertake global marketing campaigns to build the profile of the whole network, not just individual firms,” Jo explains.
The 6 stages of Baker Tilly’s rebrandSelect an agency.Put an internal governance structure in place to oversee the strategy.Desk research.Client research.Partner research.Create new positioning and visual identity from insights.
Buy-in from the board
A common denominator among these three rebrand projects was the support they had from senior leadership.
“It seems obvious but you need to identify senior stakeholders and bring them on the journey with you,” says Unlimited’s Sarah Shilling. “Fundamentally when there’s change, people are very loyal to brands with existing heritage. It’s very important you educate them on the journey and why that’s changing.”
Marc agrees. He was keen to have execs pledge their commitment, understanding the size of the task that lay ahead. “Throughout the project we’ve had a catch up with the execs every two weeks to talk through where we’ve been and have developed a culture of transparency.”
These meetings gave him the opportunity to discuss potential challenges that lay ahead, and work together to find solutions. Without that buy-in from the top of the business, it can be difficult and can act as an internal obstacle to what you’re trying to deliver.
4 questions to ask your boardWhen Jo Luck made her case for a rebrand to the Baker Tilly board, she asked if they could answer the following four questions.Does our visual identity represent who we are?Does it convey who we aspire to be in the future?Does it help us reach a broader audience?Does it set us apart from the wider competition?When they answered no to these, it created the impetus at senior level to move ahead with the project
Take time to plan your strategy
Baker Tilly knew it wanted its brand to be relevant and relatable to customers, so a lot of emphasis was placed on the research stage of its project, which took four months. “You can’t create a new positioning statement and visual identity based on what you think you know,” warns Jo. “Our new identity and positioning came directly out of the research we did.”
Sarah agrees that you need to spend time building a strategy that will last. “You need to have a clear vision from the strategy about what your proposition and branding might look like in a year or two.”
Unlimited also conducted a large amount of customer research, a phase Sarah says agencies often overlook – being too quick to “tell and sell” without understanding their clients’ needs. She recommends asking lots of questions to help form your strategy, and this doesn’t necessarily have to be all formal research. “The best way to maintain good relationships with clients is to have direct conversations.”
Winning over sceptical employees
Employees can feel protective about a brand – particularly if they’ve worked on curating it or have been at the company a long time. Marc encountered this during the PA Media Group rebrand. “We’ve got people who have worked here for 30 to 40 years, and have become attached to the brand,” he says.
The team leading the rebrand decided to make the project a company collaboration to ensure people feel heard. Otherwise, it can be quite demotivating to be handed a new logo and told to use it, Marc says.
Soon after the project was signed-off, staff from a variety of sub-brands, locations, roles and responsibilities were approached to get involved. A series of workshops were held to get employee feedback on what the new brand should represent.
Marc recalls a critical point for getting the company on-board was after the initial designs had been put together. “We went round the business to five different offices to actually present the new brand to the business. We took them through the process of getting there.”
During these presentations, staff were able to ask questions and raise points the rebrand team hadn’t considered. These were then incorporated into the next iteration of the design.
Since the rebrand launched in June, the marketing teams at PA Media have continued to build upon staff feedback. Marc says: “The important thing is accepting the communication will continue. There may be use cases that emerge that haven’t been considered by the brand guidelines, and we very much see those guidelines as a living, breathing document that can be added to.”
Jo agrees with incorporating staff feedback into your guidelines. Baker Tilly is about to launch its second, more robust, version of its guidelines, featuring case studies and examples.
Even though Baker Tilly’s history isn’t as long as PA Media’s, there was still an emotional connection to the existing brands. However, Jo says there wasn’t a lot of push-back, as member firms recognised the need for change and wanted it. However there were some firms who’ve had to change their names completely. It’s with these firms that the transition has taken longer.
One of these is the Canadian member Collins Barrow – now operating under the Baker Tilly name. “Collins Barrow was a very well-known name in Canada, but we really needed them to transition to the Baker Tilly name,” explains Jo. “They knew it too. Many of their clients were moving into global markets and needed their advisors to be global. It was a strategic decision taken by them when the question was asked ‘Do you want to be national business or global business?’.”
Another was Strego in France. It is currently in its transition period using a combination of Baker Tilly with their national name Strego. For two years, the firm will trade as Baker Tilly Strego to build equity in the new name. After that, they will become Baker Tilly. “This approach is working well for countries where the Baker Tilly name is not well known locally,” says Jo.
