Changing Your Brand

A few years ago, I was working on a website that contained a page with logos of Christian universities where each logo linked to the school's website. I had noticed that one of the logos was not the current one being used by the university and I changed it to the new logo. Since I had assumed that universities did not change their logos very often, I thought I had better check the other logos on the page.

To my astonishment, I found that almost one-fourth of the universities had updated their logos in the past three years. This was my first experience with the rapidly changing world of branding.

​Now, I better understand the need to constantly refresh your brand - from your logo to your tagline to your colors. Some schools had even changed their mascots.

​How often should a brand be refreshed? And what does it involve? The refreshment of a brand can be major and costly or minor and almost free. It depends on the needs and the circumstances. Here are some pointers:

• Your website should be refreshed at least every two years but updated continually. This might involve changing the theme or template, changing some of the colors, incorporating a new logo and/or tagline, and a complete remake. For example, I refreshed this website yesterday with a new logo, colors, and theme. I also changed the layout of the home page. Everything, including choosing a new theme, tagline, and colors took about four hours.
• Don't forget to refresh your social media pages at the same time so they will continue to match your website. Unfortunately, the cover photo and profile photo for each social media site has different specifications from the others. It may take you as long to prepare and change all of them as it does to change your website.
• Don't forget business cards, flyers, brochures, and stationery if you are changing your logo, colors, or tagline. Since many organizations don't use many of these now, the cost can be minimal.
• If your current website is not responsive (or at least mobile optimized), then this is a good time to bring it up to date and change the branding at the same time. A branding change doesn't have to be major. You may really like your current logo, tagline, and colors and don't want to change them. You may just need to rearrange them a bit.
• If you are fearful of changing your brand at all, do a little studying about this issue. I think you will find that it is usually more beneficial to update your brand than to hang on to the old one.

​Let us help you with re-branding your website and your social media. Just give us a call at 682.587.7784.