How well do you know your brand? — PART II
Before any company enters into the rebranding process, it’s incredibly important to take a step back and audit your current brand. This process can show you what brand equity exists and what isn’t working. It can also help you identify the biggest areas of opportunity.
Audit your brand personality.
Compare this to your current marketing and advertising. Do the personalities align? Is the tone and color palette of your brochures or social media platforms consistent with the atmosphere you feel in the office or at store locations?
To make this easier consider using our Archetype Discovery Tool to gain clarity around your brand’s personality. Much like your category, consumers use archetypes to quickly identify who brands are and what they stand for. In nearly every story ever written there is a hero, a lover, a sage and other personality types that have distinct values, beliefs and behaviors.
Identifying your primary one or two archetypes can help you make decisions, hire people that naturally fit well in your organization, and communicate in more meaningful ways to your audiences. If you gathered marketing and advertising materials during the personality audit, you have the tools needed for identifying your brand’s style.
Audit your brand’s style.
Whether you have a table or wall to place several examples of your brand, spread them out to create a moodboard and step back. Consider the conclusions you can draw from studying how you visually express your brand:
How consistent is your color palette, tone and overall look and feel?
Does your brand feel bold or soft, authoritative or friendly?
Does it feel like your company moves quickly, slowly or somewhere in between?
What do your color choices say about your brand?
What feelings or expectations do the shapes, patterns or textures evoke?
If you asked someone off the street to look at this board for 30 seconds and then turn away and draw your brand or logo, how close would they get? As in, how memorable is your current brand?
Think about where your brand should live on the chart below and mark where you would move the circles, either farther right or left.
At pivotal moments, rebranding is the most effective way for leaders to signal significant change. Are you at a pivotal moment? Drop us a line, and we'll be in touch.