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Your leadership has determined that rebranding of the company is the solution for reigniting brand relevance. Regardless of the specific marketplace rationale – whether your target audiences have evolved, the market has evolved or your company and its offerings have evolved and the brand is lagging behind – the process of rebranding a company has become your top priority.

Rebranding Definition

Rebranding can be mistaken with other terms like brand refresh, brand repositioning or brand revitalization. But rebranding encompasses all of these terms. Because when you’re rebranding a company, everything related to your brand is being reevaluated. It’s like bulldozing a house down to its frame. The structure remains, but everything that sits on top of it is being reworked.

In the case of rebranding, everything that encompasses how someone experiences your brand is being updated. Starting with that we at Trajectory refer to as your company’s big energizing idea, and extending to strategy, story, culture, design, communication, marketing and digital experience. A successful rebranding of a company should ensure that audiences once again see the promise of your corporate brand, but in a whole new, though genuine, light.

Considerations For Companies That Are Rebranding

Based on Trajectory’s experience partnering with companies that are rebranding across the healthcare and wellness continuum – health systems and hospitals, healthcare services agencies, clinical trials support companies, wellness services companies, among others – here are some rebranding checklist considerations with a focus on helping you deliver a successful rebranding from the inside out.

1. Being Aligned About Why You’re Rebranding

It’s important that leadership and board are aligned at the outset about your specific rebranding objectives. Whether it’s to broaden appeal to current audiences, strengthen appeal to prospective clients, more strongly differentiate from competition or to leapfrog existing competition entirely, make sure these key decision-makers and influencers are aligned about why you’re rebranding the business.

2. Cross-Functional Leadership Must Quarterback The Effort

Done right, the rebranding of a company will influence and involve every single employee. Which means leadership across divisions and departments must align around rebranding strategy decisions (what to keep and what to change), work together to build belief and institutionalize a new brand.

3. The Devil Is In The Details

Every person inside the company should understand, be engaged, inspired and provided with the tools to help champion a company rebranding. Over the course of the rebranding process, you need to step all employees through a three step process of “hearing it, believing it, living it.”

4. Don’t Neglect The Intangibles

Your rebranding should (if purposefully and collectively executed) provide tremendous brand momentum, inspiration and new levels of collaboration among employees. The more your employees believe, the more successful you’ll be in the rebranding of a company.

5. Set The Example From The Top-Down

Leadership needs to lead by example. They need to be public about supporting, committing to and delivering on new brand promises. If they don’t, employees will know that this is not a true strategic priority for the organization.

6. What Gets Measured Gets Managed

Metrics should be put in place to measure the ongoing progress of the rebranding process (both image and impact measures, among internal and external audiences). If you’re not formally measuring, the perception is that it’s just not that important to the organization.

7. Rebranding Is A Journey, Not A Sprint

Success takes time. You can realistically look at a 12 to 18 month time frame to truly institutionalize the new company branding. Along the way, you will need to address internal culture, processes and practices. And you’ll need to consider all the touchpoints through which each of your departments interact with audiences, to ensure a consistent and powerful reinforcement of the brand promises that flow from your Big Energizing Idea (what some people might call a unifying brand idea).

8. Keep The Big Picture In Mind

Rebranding a business shouldn’t come down to employees perceiving that the effort is all about logo-cops and brand police. There’s a bigger picture that you don’t want to lose sight of. So be sure to find ways to also reinforce the rebranding strategy elements like brand story, positioning and messaging.

9. The Ultimate Prize

Organizations who are consistently on the Most Admired Company Lists and Best Places to Work Lists also happen to be on the Strongest Brands Lists. They go hand-in-hand, and feed of each other. Don’t let all your hard work of rebranding the company be perceived as ending up with a new name and logo. This would be tremendously unfortunate – and totally avoidable if everyone works together to understand, embrace and act in line with new brand direction.

10. Plan The Program, Program The Plan

The same discipline that goes into developing an annual marketing plan should be put into preparing a comprehensive rebranding strategy playbook. It should help keep everyone across the organization aligned in your rebranding strategy, process, timelines, deliverables, responsibilities and your ultimate goals.

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Since 1999, New Jersey marketing agency Trajectory has partnered with companies across the United States healthcare and wellness continuum – developing, launching, rebranding and supporting brands to rise above the noise to reach their full market potential.  Reach out for a no-obligation consultation.