Brands evolve. Does your brand need to?
Change is a constant
Organizations change over time. Products and services evolve, new ones are introduced and old lines discontinued. Target audiences shift. The boomers that used to be your core clients may have now all been replaced by millennials or Gen X in management positions. Your brand still needs to be an authentic reflection of your organization, but if it has been years since you took a deep look into your messaging, mission and vision statements, and who your core target audiences are and know why they buy from you, it could be a good to time to take an assessment. If so, it could also be an opportunity to take a look at your visual identity, including your logo and color palette.
This is not an every year event. If your brand has been well defined, it may be just a once in an every 5-to-7-year review and update at most. Your messaging, or what your primary messages are through all channels to your target audience, should be reviewed annually. Consider doing both of these after your most recent strategic planning session. Some notable examples include Banana Republic and Dropbox.
Banana Republic
For those of you in an older generational category, you may recall when Banana Republic was where you would go to outfit yourself like Indiana Jones. They even had old WWII jeeps, fake palm trees, along with hiking pants and felt adventure hats in their retail stores. Not surprising since they launched in 1978 when it was originally the Banana Republic Travel & Safari Clothing Company. After its purchase by Gap in 1983, it evolved and continued to move upscale through the 2020s to meet the changing demands of their target audience and competed in a very crowded retail clothing industry to stay current and relevant.
Dropbox
Dropbox on the other hand is an example of a more organic evolution. They started as a simple cloud storage service in 2007. It was easy to use and effectively met the needs of having to store a lot of information that you could access from anywhere. But if they only stuck to this service, they probably wouldn’t be around today. To meet the needs of how people work today, they had to evolve. They’ve since launched tools to become more of an indispensable tool for collaboration and creative expression. Their brand is reflective of this change. Their original positioning was “a place for all things worth saving.” And although that is still at the core of who they are, through research they identified the emotional benefits of trusting Dropbox and why it was important to their customers. Their mission was updated with a focus on designing a more enlightened way of working. They wanted to reimagine how they engage with new and existing customers. This was best expressed by their head of brand marketing when they relaunched their brand in 2021; “This isn't just a campaign. It's a collaboration that defines the humans behind and within Dropbox. We're showing people — just like you and me — that trust Dropbox with their most precious files. It's a moment to pause and reimagine our digital lives.”
Your brand
The benefits of updating your brand could include the discovery of new target audiences, finding ways to deepen existing relationships, ensuring your brand is still relevant, and is a better reflection of your values to your customers- which should all support an opportunity to improve your bottom line. The key is not to change your brand for change’s sake. Think beyond your logo. It’s an evolution and should be viewed as ensuring what you say, how you appear and interact with your customers, how you keep your promises, and uphold your values authentically as possible.