Rebranding with Printed Materials: Brochures, Stationary and Cards

Businesses rebrand for numerous reasons.  Sometimes it is because a company has grown or expanded and wants to share the good news.  And other times it is because the company has become associated with a negative impression, and they want to shake that bad image.  No matter the reason, there is a proper way to implement rebranding.

Types of Rebranding

There are two types of rebranding – a partial rebrand and a total rebrand.

A partial rebrand is often done when a company needs to be refreshed due to changes in products or services.  You still want your customers to recognize your brand, but you simply want to update your look.  This can be done by updating your brochures, stationary, and cards to reflect a new and fresher logo or company saying.

A total rebrand is often needed for corporate mergers, when a brand was not properly established initially, or if a brand has become associated with something negative.  This will again require not only new brochures, stationary, and cards, but also changes in colors, logos, and other things by which your business is recognized.

Making Your Rebrand Successful

If you will go through the effort and expense of rebranding your company, then you want to ensure that the rebrand will be successful.  Obviously, there is no guarantee, and even some of the best rebrand campaigns have fallen short.

Start by including important people in the decision making process.  This can include long term and trusted employees, other businesses that you work with, and even valued customers.  From there, you will need to start the rebranding process from the inside out.

Remember that rebranding with new brochures, stationary, and other paper goods will only be successful if the internal processes of the company change to match the new image.  The rollout should be excited and well advertised, employees should be passionate about the changes, and everyone in the company should be involved.  New programs may need to be created to keep the process going.

Reasons for Failure

There are many reasons why a rebranding effort may fail, including:

• No real change.  If your logo goes from navy blue to black, there’s a good chance that many of your casual customers will not notice the difference.  When rebranding, choose printed materials that look noticeably different from what you are currently using.
• Making too much change.  Remember that if you already have a solid customer base, you do not want to alienate them during the rebrand.  Don’t try to skip steps in your company’s evolution, but make changes that are smooth and natural.
• No companywide change.  Simply changing the look of your brochures and business cards will not achieve rebranding if there is not a change in company products and/or policies to solidify the change.
• Confusion.  The main goal of rebranding is to clarify your position in the market.  If customers are confused about what the changes are and mean, or do not understand what you offer, you will lose more customers than you make.

Your corporate stationery plays a large role in the branding of your business, and with the appropriate considerations, they can play an important part of your successful rebrand campaign.