Hello,
I'm Mervi Eskelinen!
An artist, nerd and sorcerer, dedicated to make world softer and better for everyone, and to get you to make more art. Make art, change the world!
Modifying the brand
Business fairies, career coaches and branding magicians are always telling you to create a consistent brand. Making sure your images, colours and other visuals as well as content are in line is one of the steps of branding. What happens when you notice your old look and content aren't working any longer and your cohesive brand needs renovation? Will you stick with the old, well crafted style, do little tweaks or start over?
Modifying the brand is a somewhat scary thing to do. Will the old customers, blog readers, followers and Facebook likers get onboard or will they be confused or even abandon you or your business? Keeping the old customers happy is a good idea and multiple studies say maintaining current customer base is cheaper than trying to get new ones. However sometimes you want to switch your target groups completely. Those times it's not that big a deal to make the change of names, visuals and descriptions. It's important to note that changes aren't always the sure way to alienate your current customers. Many bigger brands go through pretty notable modifications sooner or later.
You can either implement your modifications one by one, letting your brand evolve slowly or you can make the switch as one overhaul. Both approaches are okay, yet choosing the right way to go depends highly on your brand and on your customers as well. Slow evolving and quick rebuild can both be as destructive and as constructive. Making the modifications known, announce the changes boldly is effective. This way they don't come as a surprise to so many people. One approach is to give the customers a chance to try the new look before it's implemented, if that's possible. When that sort of testing is not an option the changes can published as a blog post, newsletter, Facebook post, Tweet or other ways. Announcing the changes gives your customers a heads up and makes the curious types to come and see what's up.
Be careful with the response and feedback of the changes. Facebook gives the timeline, profile or page design tweaks or total revamp in times. It's true that many of their users tend to get upset about it, but after a while they are accustomed to the new look and then get upset if things are changed even closer to what used to be before. There's always someone who doesn't like the change itself or something in your look or content or someone who believes they know the best. You don't have to implement all the ideas you are given and similarly you can take all the response and feedback you receive as suggestions to be read and archived. The customers, blog readers, followers and Facebook likers that actually count will be okay with the changes now or at later time. Don't be scared of the response and the feedback, sometimes people need to vent, so let them.
Changing names and titles, colours, logos and other symbols and even the content is not impossible thing to do. Usually the advice is to create the cohesive brand and stick with it. However if the modifications are needed or wanted it's better to go with them than to stick with what's not working for you or for your customers.
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