Over the weekend, my daughter wanted to update the look of her bedroom to reflect, as she told me on more than one occasion, …the “new her.” Well, as we finished painting and as she started moving the furniture around and bringing new stuff into the room as well, it occurred to me that she was just “refreshing” the look of the room and not “rebranding” who she was as a person. You see, while the color of her room had changed,  a lot of other things remained the same because they spoke to who she is and what’s important to her.  And the same thing holds true for companies…maybe yours, as well.

And herein lies the question: When the need arises, should you be rebranding or just refreshing your brand?

As we know, rebranding your business can be an intensive process that can literally redefine a company from the ground up. It’s more than just slapping on a new coat of colors. Instead, a rebrand is a complete redo of an already established brand because the brand has become somewhat stale, insignificant, or are just dated. This often happens when the brand has been around for a while, regardless of size or industry. Contributing factors include: aggressive competition, becoming “lost in time” with an aging customer base, or industry changes that begin to turn a company’s brand irrelevant.

However, rebranding a company from the ground up might not be the best bet for several reasons. For one, rebranding a company tends to erase history in the mind of the customer and you not only run the risk alienating current customers but confounding prospective customers. Oh, and don’t forget about the money that’s involved. Still, for many businesses, it’s necessary in order to stay competitive.

However, it is possible to take a small-scale approach by simply refreshing your brand. Think of it as remodeling your home. It’s still the same house that keeps you safe and warm; you’re just replacing the dark brown shag carpeting with hardwood floors and the yellow tile countertops with granite. It’s more of a remodel of your existing brand than a complete rebuild.

Ok, so why should you be considering this option? Well, if your company has been around for a while, maybe it’s time to revitalize your dated look, or make it more appealing to a contemporary audience, or  target a new audience, or address current market conditions. This involves revising/reinvigorating a brand’s positioning and branding imagery to ensure that the messaging is not only strategically sound, but that the brand’s look is up-to-date while still keeping much of the brand’s equity.  In short, it’s less of an overhaul, and more of a clarification. The brand name is left untouched, but there are changes in the logo design.  Maybe it’s the sizing, placement and type of images and graphics to be used or additional shades of brand colors.  It could be a new look to your website, packaging or a change in the tagline.

With this in mind, here are five things are worth considering:

1. Regardless of the reason, make sure to clearly define why it’s necessary to rebrand or refresh a brand and then share your rationale with your team members and other key company stakeholders to encourage buy-in.
2. Going back to the remodeling metaphor, you wouldn’t grab a hammer and just start knocking down walls around your house without plan. The same holds true for refreshing your brand. In short, have a plan in place that takes into account budget, timeline, parts of your business that will be affected (i.e., marketing materials, logos, signage, etc).
3. You don’t want to invest in a major brand refresh only to have to do it again anytime soon. Stay away from the flavor of the month or trends that are popular today but may not have the staying power to keep your brand current long-term.  That said, it would be a good idea to consult with marketing experts who know how to do this. I’ll say this respectfully….don’t think you can do this yourself. You can’t.
4. If you can, it’s never a bad idea to let your most important customers know what you’re doing. You don’t have to let them know everything up front but it would be good to give them a “heads-up” prior to the rest of the world seeing it.
5. Don’t change for the sake of change. Don’t refresh or redesign your brand simply because you’re tired of it. It should be a clear-headed business decision that has a purpose.

Refreshing your brand is no walk in the park. It takes a lot of preparation and hard work to do it right, but it can help to ensure your brand stays fresh and continues to resonate with your customers. What better way to say “hey, we’re changing with the times” than to refresh your company image.

Businesses everywhere are searching with ever-increasing frenzy for the wonder drug that’s going to help their businesses do more sales. A few years ago it was search engine optimization. Today it’s social media marketing.  My take on this is to do your company a favor and save your money because using social media as a pathway to sales is almost certainly not going to work to the degree you want.  What? Heresy you say?

You see, while social media can be a valuable marketing tool, it’s not magic, it is not a miracle, and it cannot and won’t replace everything that came before it. By itself, social media doesn’t work well.  I realize what I’m saying is not likely to be well-received, especially with the hundreds of people who have set themselves up as social media experts over the last year. I can understand why people think social media will cure everything, but I challenge anybody reading this to produce a real success story that has led to an actual increase in sales.

Just take a look at the top brands on Facebook (www.fanpagelist.com/category/brands) to see which brands people Like and Follow on Facebook and Twitter respectively. It’s hard not to be amazed.  The #20 brand (Skittles) has more fans than there are people who live in Texas! Yup…Texas. Wow!  Who needs paid media when you can reach a mass audience for free?   Surely that’s an opportunity just too good to miss, right? Surely it makes sense to place a chunk of your limited and stretched marketing budget on a social media expert who promises to get your message out there so that the profits will roll in. Right?

Well, hold on for a reality check. One significant fact is that most of the top social brands continue to invest heavily in traditional media.  Coke is near the top of the top brands on Facebook with more than 70 million followers. WalMart has over 30 million.  The route to social media success, it seems, runs through traditional channels.  Even the exceptions like YouTube and Starbucks are worth looking at. They obviously didn’t grow into superstar brands using Facebook and Twitter but rather use social media to capitalize on brand equity they have already built-up.  In fact, when Google started getting serious competition, they started running TV ads.  When there’s a product launch, a sale or just about any other occasion where you need to reach a mass audience quickly and effectively, there’s still no substitute for paid media…and the dot com’s know it.

Social media is a long, hard row to hoe. There’s no quick success and very few programs break through. Ask any company in the country and they’ll tell you they have some kind of social media program in place. Some of the more active companies write a few blog posts a week; reply to comments and questions on a daily basis; and update their Twitter and Facebook feeds repeatedly. A tiny, tiny proportion of them are having anything that resembles significant impact. Fact is, Coca-Cola says it can find no correlation between “buzz” on Twitter and actual unit sales. Auto manufacturer Nissan admits it has no idea if social media helps it shift cars. MasterCard can’t tie its social investment to revenues. In fact, there remains little evidence social media does anything to boost brands’ bottom lines.

Our firm’s experience has been pretty much the same.  Although LinkedIn groups were helpful in the beginning, Facebook and Twitter were almost useless for the first year.  It took awhile to build a following and learn how to develop it before we saw any benefits that justified the effort.

Oh, and let’s not forget about that group of mysterious online people out there that supposedly hold all the cards … the “Influentials.”  Tap into them and they’ll disperse your message to the masses, or so some would have us believe. The fact is that in-depth research into the matter finds this whole idea completely baseless. Brands like Apple, Harley Davidson and Trader Joes, for instance, have been able to build an army of passionate followers without an “influencers” strategy.

That doesn’t mean that influence doesn’t exist.  It does.  TV show host Oprah Winfrey  is very influential as doctors are when it comes to health issues, clergy for spiritual issues and so on.  However, there’s nothing mysterious about them.  Marketers have long used celebrity endorsements, trade marketing and community outreach where appropriate.  The truth is that brands are not built by influential people, but by influential ideas. The problem is that so called “influencers” aren’t that much more influential than anybody else.  Don’t take my word for this. Go online and do your own research and see for yourself.

Again, social media by itself is not a great way to build a brand.  You’re just inserting yourself into an ocean of jumbled voices and are unlikely to stand out. Marketers like to complain about the clutter in traditional media, but in social media it’s so much more cluttered.

So then why use social media at all?  The reason is that it is an impactful vehicle for empowering advocacy and we know that’s extremely important for brand health and profitability.  Social media, if done right, can capitalize on what brand equity your company has already built up.

So when I hear social media “experts” who make outrageous claims, who state misleading research, who use everything from stories to rumors to masquerade as facts, whose bias renders them short of perspective, and who completely dismiss the power of ‘traditional’ advertising… they’re ONLY, ONLY, voicing their opinion and not “showing me the beef.”

While social media is a vitally important component of an overall effort, it’s no replacement for sound marketing principles.