Jeremy Chen
How to Rebrand Your Company with Promotional Products
If you’re not happy about the way consumers perceive your brand, it’s time to go through a rebranding exercise. As marketers and business owners, it’s absolutely vital that you manage how your customers perceive your company, so people know you the way you’d like them to think of you.
In case you’re wondering why you should rebrand, here are a few valid reasons:
- New Owner: If you’ve recently acquired another business, and you want to change the way it’s marketing has been done, it’s a good reason to ‘rebrand’ it.
- Customer Feedback: Just look at some of your customers comments on your social media channels. If they’re complaining about your product or service, it’s time to reconsider what you need to do differently, and how you can create a positive impression through a brand identity your customers love.
- Repositioning: You may simply want to reposition your brand in the marketplace and stay current with the times, or reinvent who you are as a company. That’s a perfect place to be rebranding from.
- International Expansion: If you’re expanding to a whole new country, rebranding is an absolute must. Every country has a new code of conduct and a new culture, so it’s necessary to rebrand to appeal to new customers in a new market.
There are many examples of companies that have achieved rebranding success. Let’s look at Paypal. Initially, Paypal was never meant to be Paypal! Elon Musk had started a company by the name of ‘Confinity’ with the goal of being one centralised place for all financial needs.
On receiving positive customer feedback on one specific feature within their service offering, email payments, the cofounders made the decision to rebrand the company to “Paypal” specialising in email payments, only. The rest is history!
Another example of a company that rebranded smartly is Walmart. As you’d know, Walmart is known for being the retail ‘price leader’. So it would use expressions like “Lowest Prices, Always” in their branding. However, with this approach, they were only attracting customers with tiny shopping budgets, and missing out on higher income shoppers.
They rebranded to being a brand that’s not only cost effective, but also provides a great shopping experience to those interested in ‘living well’ with the following message:
This simple change in branding helped them attract a whole new customer segment, previously lying untapped.
Depending on where you’re at with building your rebranding endeavours, you need to be working towards a new ‘brand vision’ with utmost clarity and precision. Only then will you manage to shift your customers perception about you.
Being experts within the promotional merchandising domain, we wanted to help you figure out how you can leverage promotional products for re-branding purposes. Once you have the fundamentals of your rebranding strategy nailed, your promotional product marketing will be a natural extension of it! Let’s look at a few factors you must take into consideration.
Choose The Quality Of Your Promotional Products Based On Your New Brand Image
Depending on what your new brand identity is going to be, you need to choose the quality of promotional products that fit into your new persona. For instance, if you’re rebranding from a high cost to a low cost product or service provider, your promotional products should reflect it.
This doesn’t mean you buy the cheapest promotional products available that break easily. It only means you choose the appropriately, and go through a ‘quality vetting process’ to choose promotional products that match how you’d like customers to think about you.
Modify Your Distribution Strategy According To Your Brand’s Image
The way you package and distribute your promotional products will vary according to your new brand identity. Say for example, you’re moving from a brand that customers perceive as being old and slow, to being young and fast, then you might shift from distributing promotional products at old age homes or events for senior citizens to distributing them at younger, ‘gen-Y’ oriented events. Makes sense, doesn’t it!
Pick Promotional Products That Voice Your Brand’s Image
Ideally, you should be picking promotional products that help you voice your brand’s image. Imagine just how odd it would be if Apple distributed cheese boards as their promotional products. The idea would be preposterous for a company that wants to be known for cutting edge innovation in technology.
But if Apple distributed really clean, simply designed notebook sleeves as their promotional products, you’d only be delighted to receive them, isn’t it?
Re-Do Your Messaging & Copy On Your Promotional Merchandise
When you’re going from an old brand to a new brand identity, you’ll need to invest in good copywriting. All of the words you’ve used to give your brand a persona previously will change for your all new identity.
When the copy and content changes, your promotional merchandise needs to have the new words imprinted onto it. Your promotional products should ‘talk to your customers’ through the words on them.
When NAB went through another very comprehensive rebranding strategy, they immediately changed the punchline on their promotional products from “More Give, Less Take.” to the new “More Than Money.” to reflect what they stand for as accurately as possible.
You need to be prompt with relaunching your promotional merchandise and circulating them among your customers, which should immediately replace all of your older promotional merchandise the day your new brand identity is launched. More importantly, your promotional products should also include a call to action that directs them to your new rebranded website or app so your customers know how to reach you.
Wrapping It Up
It’s important to be strategic in your rebranding approach. Don’t just change your brand in one night and announce it to the world. You don’t want it to be a premature attempt, and yet, you don’t want it to be too delayed and slow either.
A gradual, step-by-step approach that keeps relevant stakeholders, and even customers involved and informed is a great way to building a new brand identity. You’ll also collect meaningful feedback along the way which will filter through to your promotional products, and set you up for rebranding success.
Reach out to Good Things to explore how we can help with your promotional product needs.
