How to rebrand without losing your core audience

There are lots of reasons why you might want to rebrand. Setting yourself apart from the competition, refreshing your key messages or giving your business a modern, digital-first design are just some.

In fact, nearly three quarters of S&P 100 companies have rebranded in their first seven years of business. Big rewards have followed, with businesses that do outperforming the S&P 500 index by 219%

However, rebranding projects shouldn’t be taken lightly, with organisations also spending between 5% and 10% of their marketing budget on average. It’s not just pounds put at risk. Even subtle adjustments, such as colours, imagery or tone of voice, can disconcert customers. Change is uncomfortable, so any brand shift risks leaving your audience feeling disconnected.

The best-case scenario (which will increase higher revenue opportunity) is rebranding with both new audiences and current customers in mind. But is this actually possible? Here are some strategies and examples of businesses who’ve rebranded without losing their core buyers.

Put your audience first

Getting your core customers involved from day one of your rebrand helps them understand and buy into the changes you’re making. The first step should be defining your goals for the project. Run surveys, focus groups or social listening to understand the brand areas your target audience are dissatisfied with.

Gathering this feedback gives you a clearer picture of your brand recognition. Insights you can then add into your rebranding strategy. It also puts your target audience’s values and preferences front and centre of the project, meaning your new brand is more likely to chime closely with the group.

Customer feedback may come back positive and suggest only minimal changes need to be made. However, there’s likely to still be a business need for rebranding. In this case, integrate as much audience insight into your plan as possible and communicate clearly why these changes have been made. That way, you can still bring your customers along with you.

Highlight continuity

Although the changes may be your main focus, it’s important to reassure customers that the key elements they love about your business won’t change. Whether it’s your products, values or service they like most, explain that you’ll be keeping your best points, and making them even better, by running a rebrand. Setting out exactly what is and what isn’t going to change will help.

Preparing for questions that may come your way and having a set response will also help customers feel more confident in the face of change. Set up an FAQs page on your website, run an email chain to your mailing list answering key queries and make sure your team’s ready to respond promptly and clearly to social media messages or comments.

Gradual transition

If customers go to your website and suddenly everything’s changed, you’ll be opening the door to confusion and potential loss of loyalty. Plan a timeline carefully as part of your rebrand strategy and look to introduce your new brand design elements (e.g. your logo, colour scheme, imagery) gradually into the customer journey. This is especially significant for large organisations with complex products, services and customer subscription models.

As well as helping customers acclimatise to the changes, a slow and steady approach helps employees get a grip of them too. Make sure you run internal communications campaigns and training as part of your rebrand strategy and release information to your teams ahead of any external launch. That way, everyone feels prepared and won’t be caught off-guard.

Communicate clearly and consistently

Alongside your rebranding strategy, you need a watertight communications plan. The first phase of this should target current customers. To do this, make sure you’re reaching out on all the channels they use. This could be via your website, social media or email newsletters. All the wording and information should be clear and consistent, as mixed messages will only confuse customers and make them more likely to leave.

Once your customers are aware and comfortable with your rebrand, it’s time to promote it more widely. Particularly if your goal is to engage a new demographic group, you need to be reaching out to them via the most appropriate channels. Here, you can also afford to be bolder in your messaging, as the audience will want to get to know the ‘new’ brand rather than find out what’s changed from the ‘old’ brand.

Monitor feedback post-rebrand

So, you’ve put in all this effort. Now you need to know if it’s actually worked or not. When developing your strategy and running initial research, collect some data on relevant metrics such as customer sentiment and satisfaction, brand equity and loyalty. This gives you a benchmark to review at intervals during and after your rebranding activity.

Depending on the speed of your rebrand, you may choose to collect metrics monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly. Running this process helps you keep an eye on any sticking points, misunderstandings or blockers you need to respond to. This will help the rebrand process run smoothly and be as successful as possible.

Examples of audience-sensitive rebrands

By following the steps above, you can manage your rebrand without losing your core audience. Here’s how some brands have done it in reality.

Petco's design difference

Founded in 1965, Petco has long been recognised with consumers for it's beloved dog and cat mascots, Ruff&Mews.

With the business planning an expansion of its pet care services into the health and wellness sector, the brand embarked on a refresh to modernise itself for the digital market and to appeal to the new audience type.

However, the pet care leader acknowledged that its friendly and quirky way of communicating with the customer – coupled with its long-standing mascot icons – needed to play a key role in the rebrand in order to retain their core audience.

The dog and cat mascots Ruff&Mews appeared more frequently alongside a new and vibrant colour palette. The new designs expanded onto their packaging, OOH campaigns, inside their vet hospitals and treatment centres.

Like their mascots, the playful graphics, imagery and tone of voice put customers’ pets at the centre of all communications. This chimes with customers’ main priority - making sure their animals are happy and healthy - and shows that Petco shares this mutual value.

These changes to the brand enhanced their already established brand personality (setting them apart from competitors) and highlighted the business values of compassion, fun and optimism.

Upping the 'play' in Fisher-Price

The famous educational toys company wanted to bring more ‘play’ back to their brand identity without losing their long-built recognition. The original brand was too rigid for the owners new vision of reestablishing the playfulness of the business.

The rebrand started with making subtle changes to the brand logo typography and graphics, giving it a softer, rounder and more energetic feel – without becoming unrecognisable.

The characterisation of 'play' is captured in the new logo, which was further expanded by extracting the renowned 'f' and 'p' to become an icon derivative of the full brand logo. Creating a versatility of the brand like this enabled the business to maintain its distinct familiarity with the core audience, whilst broadening its ability to apply the brand in a wide variety of ways.

The rebrand got rid of harsh points and dull colours and teamed them up with a fun tone of voice (‘we don’t act a day over five’ and ‘you’ll understand when you’re younger’). Cute and bouncy, the new elements shake off any ‘boring’ brand perceptions and shift towards attributes of fun, action, celebration, silliness and joy.

Digitally-driven Skoda

The prominent Czech car brand, Skoda, has long been recognised for its winged arrow symbol.

However, as electric models and digital experiences come to the forefront in the car industry, Skoda needed to reposition themselves as a tech-first brand. But, they didn’t want to do this without losing the elements most recognisable to their core audience – the historically-linked colour green and distinct winged-arrow symbol.

As Skoda’s brand design manager Petra Mackeová said "customer opinions played a key role in the new identity.” This led them to add two new shades (emerald and electric green) to their brand palette and cut their accent into their wordmark which, according to research, made it ‘easier to recognise and identify’.

The new, hyper-modern rebrand has been conscientiously aligned with a new customer audience that lives in a digital and sustainably-focused world. But at the core, the brand remains intimately recognisable to their core and loyal audience.

Grow from your core

Rebranding is an opportunity for growth and evolution, but including your core audience during the process is essential. By listening to their needs, communicating any changes clearly and making a gradual transition, you can successfully rebrand without losing your loyal customers or any brand affinity.

Having run rebrands for a range of businesses, we understand that these projects need to be handled with diligence and care. Working closely alongside you, the Designmc team will balance your needs with those of your customers and create a fresh brand that drives results.

Get in touch with us today calling 01926 754038 or email us at hello@designmc.org