What is the best approach to rebranding and how do you make it successful? Whether we’re building a brand from scratch, rebranding, or taking on a brand refresh, our approach to branding projects is largely the same!
What is the difference between a rebrand and a brand refresh you may ask? Rebranding changes the visual identity and overall look, feel and approach of a company. A brand refresh however, channels the best bits of any brand and adds extra oomph and a new lease of life!
At Ultimate we work with some amazing brands, across all sorts of industries. This is what keeps things really interesting for us and always fresh for our clients! Whatever the project or point we’re meeting our client on their branding journey, those first steps are always charged with excitement!
First we kick off with our discovery phase. Through workshops and collaborative sessions we listen, learn and question! (Then we question some more!) These high energy sessions are completely interactive and they really help immerse our team in your world! They inspire clients to deep dive into research, audiences and sources of inspiration. We just can’t wait to get things started.
Positioning a brand for rebranding
Once we know all about who you are, we will set to define this through our brand positioning stage. This document really helps clients to distil their offering of a product or service to the outside world. During rebranding projects this always brings clarity to a new offering. It adds a simplicity, removing the confusing and complex! (No brand wants to lose anyone along the way!)
Our Ultimate approach to brand positioning always tells a good story, creating something memorable for your audience to connect with. It helps to inform the brand’s visual identity. This ensures that everything connected to a brand anchors back to a core vision, mission and proposition. It encapsulates core values, a set of fundamental beliefs and sets a relatable feel to the messaging and tone of voice. which always propels us in our next steps!
Brand positioning tells everyone who a brand is and it defines the personality. This helps us know before we’ve even so much as thought about a logo, who a brand really is and what it feels like!
Once we’ve defined a brand, captured the essence and really understood its personality, we know what they stand for and what they believe in! This means we can help them to communicate… which is where things get visual!
Making it visual
A combination of research, inspiration and ideas are brought together in the form of mood boards. Mood boards are designed to steer towards a visual direction. The boards help to evoke a feeling, and suggest an approach, whilst encouraging collaboration.
Mood boards explore the look and feel of a brand. They start to open up conversations about colour, typography and imagery. This allows the next stage to focus on creating maximum impact with clear direction.
The brand concept
Without a doubt the most exciting part of the rebranding creative process is the reveal of the brand concept. Throughout this stage our team of talented designers will have created and connected every aspect of your brand to bring it to life. It’s the first time that our clients get to see how everything works together. They will see the brand identity, colour palette, typography, imagery and messaging… basically everything a brand needs to communicate in its own unique way!
We believe that it’s the meaningful connections, interactions and agility of any brand that really strengthens their position and gives them the ability to delight their audience again and again!
Keeping a brand on point
The best brands out there are truly reflective of the business and everything it stands for. Once everything is in place we really believe that digital brand guidelines keep the flexibility needed to keep any brand performing at its very best! It’s a way of keeping internal teams or contacts that work with your brand (like agencies and partners) fully updated and in the loop in the most agile way possible! They house all of the newly created brand assets in one central and shareable place, this really is the future of brand guidelines!
Darwin Escapes digital brand guidelines
At Ultimate we recently rebranded as a human first, digital agency. The rebrand was designed to fully reflect how we had evolved as an agency and show where we were as a business, whilst allowing us the freedom to embrace where our agency was heading.
The rebrand was an exciting time for the whole team. It’s reflective of more than the creative and digital work we produce but also of our culture and ethos. Our brand captures what makes us, Ultimate! The whole process added a new wave of energy to everything we created both internally and externally. Using every element in our tool kit we have a cutting edge, functional brand that allows us to constantly connect, engage and communicate with our audience and above all it feels true to us.
So how do you know when rebranding has really worked? . For us regular contact with our clients and their projects keeps us connected. It’s how we ensure that their brands are working for them!
To find out more about rebranding at Ultimate click here.
If you’d like our help with your branding project get in touch!
