A rebrand can change far more than how your business looks.
Done properly, it can clarify what you stand for, reposition your business, help you reach a different audience and give your team a much stronger platform for future growth.
Done badly?
You’ve potentially spent a significant amount of money changing your logo without addressing the reason your brand wasn’t working in the first place.
So, if you’re searching for a rebranding agency, how do you know which one is right for your business?
At TRCREATIVE, we’ve been creating and evolving brands since 2009. Here are some of the things we’d recommend considering before choosing an agency to lead your rebrand.
A good rebranding agency shouldn’t start with your logo.
It should start with your business.
Before deciding how your new brand should look, your agency needs to understand where your organisation is now, where you’re trying to take it and what’s standing in the way.
Depending on the project, a strategic rebrand can involve:
The visual identity is important.
But it should be the result of the thinking, not the starting point.
One of the biggest differences between a logo redesign and a genuine rebrand is strategy.
Changing your logo may make your business look newer.
A strategic rebrand asks much bigger questions.
Why should customers choose you?
What makes you meaningfully different from your competitors?
Has your business outgrown the way it currently presents itself?
Does your positioning reflect the organisation you’ve become, or the company you were five or ten years ago?
What do you want people to understand, feel and remember about your business?
Your rebranding agency should be interested in these questions before anyone chooses colours or sketches logos.
There isn’t one universal reason to rebrand a company.
You might have outgrown your original identity. Your services may have changed. You may be entering new markets or targeting a different audience.
Perhaps you’ve undergone a merger or acquisition.
Maybe your brand simply looks and sounds increasingly similar to everyone else in your sector.
Or there may be a disconnect between how good the business actually is and how good it looks from the outside.
A strong rebranding agency should diagnose the problem before prescribing the solution.
Looking through an agency’s portfolio is important, but don’t just ask:
“Do I like these logos?”
Look deeper.
Can you see the thinking behind the work?
Does every client look different, or does everything appear to have been designed in the agency’s own style?
Does the identity work across websites, social media, brochures, presentations, signage, packaging and other real-world applications?
Most importantly, can the agency explain why it made the decisions it made?
A beautiful identity is valuable.
A beautiful identity that communicates the wrong thing isn’t.
Some consultancies are excellent strategists but don’t deliver the creative execution.
Some design agencies create beautiful identities but don’t go particularly deep into strategy.
For a substantial business rebrand, there can be real advantages in bringing the two together.
Messaging informs design.
Strategy informs creative decisions.
And the finished identity remains connected to the original business objectives.
At TRCREATIVE, our approach brings brand strategy and creative brand development together, creating a clear line between what we discover about the business and the identity we ultimately create.
A new identity doesn’t live in a brand guidelines PDF.
It needs to work.
Think about everywhere your existing brand appears: your website, social channels, presentations, sales documents, brochures, advertising, email, signage, exhibitions, packaging, vehicles, uniforms and internal communications.
When choosing your rebranding agency, ask how they’ll help you move from brand creation to brand implementation.
A strong brand system should give your internal team and external suppliers the tools they need to use your identity consistently long after launch.
Your website is likely to be one of the most visible expressions of your brand.
Putting a completely new identity over an old website can leave the job feeling half finished.
A rebrand can therefore be an opportunity to reconsider not only how the website looks, but its messaging, user experience, content, calls to action, SEO and conversion journeys.
If you’re likely to need both a rebranding agency and a website rebranding agency, bringing brand and digital expertise together from the beginning can make the transition considerably easier.
Rebranding shouldn’t simply be something that’s done to an organisation.
Your leadership team, employees and other stakeholders often hold valuable insight.
They know the customers. They understand the culture. They know what’s changed.
Workshops, interviews and collaborative discovery can uncover this knowledge and create greater internal ownership of the eventual direction.
Not necessarily.
But there can be advantages.
TRCREATIVE is a rebranding agency based in Cheshire, working with organisations locally and throughout the UK.
For businesses across Cheshire, Manchester, Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent and Shropshire, being relatively local makes face-to-face strategy workshops, stakeholder sessions, photography, filming and launch activity straightforward.
At the same time, much of the strategy, design and project management process can happen remotely.
Rebranding costs vary enormously depending on the organisation and scope.
Rather than comparing agencies solely on a single figure, understand what’s actually included.
Is there research?
Strategy?
Positioning?
Messaging?
Stakeholder engagement?
A complete identity system?
Guidelines?
Implementation?
The cheapest quote isn’t necessarily the cheapest project if substantial parts of the work need to be commissioned separately afterwards.
We’ve put together a separate guide explaining how much it costs to rebrand a company and the factors that affect the investment.
Your agency shouldn’t simply make everything you’ve already decided look nicer.
Part of its job is to question the brief.
Perhaps the problem isn’t your logo.
Maybe your positioning isn’t clear.
Perhaps you’ve become too similar to competitors.
Maybe your messaging is trying to communicate too much.
Or perhaps the organisation has changed significantly, but the brand story hasn’t caught up.
Good rebranding should uncover those issues.
Sometimes that means the project you thought you needed at the beginning isn’t exactly the project you need once the discovery work has been completed.
That’s a good thing.
TRCREATIVE is an independent branding and rebranding agency in Cheshire, working with ambitious organisations across the UK.
Since 2009, we’ve helped businesses develop brands that better communicate who they are, what makes them different and where they’re going next.
Our rebranding work brings together strategy, positioning, messaging, brand identity, creative design, guidelines, website design and rollout.
Whether your existing identity needs to evolve or your business needs more fundamental repositioning, we’ll start by understanding the organisation before deciding what should change.
THINKING ABOUT REBRANDING YOUR BUSINESS?
Discover our approach to rebranding and talk to us about where your brand needs to go next.
