Rebranding An Established Business
For the last two weeks I’ve been working on a redesign of the Ask Lilach virtual assistant service brand identity and this below is my favourite design out of the three concepts presented. A design has not been chosen as of yet.
What I think is appealing to me about this design is that it is strong and bold, and if you look very carefully you can spot that the two larger characters on the left form the letters VA - (Virtual Assistant)
The three character set, which comprises of a female in the foreground a male behind her on the left and a non specific gender character behind her further in the distance on the right, has been specifically used to firmly indicate that Ask Lilach comprises of a team of virtual assistants rather than just a singular virtual assistant.
Ask Lilach are keen to not loose the company name itself because not only is there significant brand equity in it due to the number of years they have been trading, but also because it’s a catchy unique name that is warm and friendly, so there would be no reason to change it.
Ask Lilach have experienced substantial growth over recent years. Starting out as one person only (Lilach!) and growing to a team of several. With this design I also like the way it’s indicated that the person in charge is female, because of course she is, and this could also go some way to helping existing customers with the image transition.
We wouldn’t want them to feel that Lilach is no longer personally available to them simply because the business is growing, because although she won’t always be the person speaking to them, she’s ’still there’ and still the force behind Ask Lilach and thus they can still look forward to the same standard of service they have come to rely upon.
Ask Lilach are soon moving into larger offices as a result of their growth, and an update of their image will allow them to develop the business further and provide them with the right tools to acquire larger clients.
They have the capacity to provide excellent support to a corporate market and hence the logo aims to present the image of a multi-person team (which they are), capable and experienced in handling the needs of a corporate market, whilst still friendly enough to reassure existing clients and not alienate SMEs.
Once the new brand identity has been established we’ll be working on ensuring that the identity is clear and consistent in all that Ask Lilach do - so we’ll be updating stationery, documentation and more.
I feel some tips coming on …..
Why You May Want To Rebrand
- To improve your image and charge a premium for services/products.
- To hold your own against a competitor and establish market leadership.
- To revitalise your company in your existing customers eyes and retain your customer base.
- When your existing identity no longer communicates your brand well.
- To recover from a scandal or poor brand reputation.
- To maintain the appearance of being modern/progressive.
Pitfalls To Avoid
- Clinging unnecessarily to the past. The whole point of a rebrand is to change the way your company behaves to ensure it’s in line with the new image.
Or it can be to represent the existing company behavior more accurately, for instance company behavior and services can evolve over time and sometimes the brand image needs to be updated to represent this better, such as in the example of Ask Lilach.
- Thinking that a rebrand is simply a repolish of your logo and stationery. Think about the ways in which your company will be upholding the new image you are presenting to the world. Does anything else need to change to ensure the two match? Sometimes rebranding completely fails when there is a lack of ‘real change’.
- Dismissing brand equity completely … sometimes it can be good to hold onto a little bit of that past depending on your individual circumstances. For instance Ask Lilach are keeping their name.
