Spring Cleaning Your Brand: 3 Times You Need a Brand Refresh

With spring upon us, you’re likely thinking about spring cleaning your home or office space to clear the clutter that always seems to accumulate over the year. The same is true for your brand. Your organization’s brand is a living thing that requires care and attention so that it doesn’t become stale and misaligned.

We often talk to clients who share that they are having difficulties in their marketing and as we start to peel back the layers of their challenge, we find there is a disconnect within the brand. For nonprofits and small businesses, it’s not always feasible — whether from a timing or financial standpoint — to do a major rebrand. This is where the brand refresh comes in.

During a brand refresh, we do a scaled down version of research and discovery from your brand’s stakeholders, audit your marketing channels, and develop new brand messaging that can be used to refocus your marketing efforts. A brand refresh doesn’t include time developing a new visual identity or a new website which makes it the perfect option for organizations who may not have the time, financial resources, or staff to do a full rebrand at this time.

3 Times You Need a Brand Refresh

1. Your day-to-day marketing efforts feel stale or are not getting the engagement they should. Your day-to-day marketing efforts should always come back to your brand pillars, but if you’re having trouble developing a marketing strategy or even coming up with content, it may be because there is a disconnect in your brand. A brand refresh will hit the reset button to help you refocus your marketing efforts and give you a rallying point to develop your day-to-day strategy and content.

2. There’s been a (minor) change to your program, product, or service offerings. Recently, a nonprofit came to us because they had dropped a program within their offerings and were having trouble knowing how to move forward in their marketing. Their overall brand was still strong, but they really needed refreshed brand messaging to help the staff know how to talk about the organization without this specific program as well as give the marketing team better direction on how to promote the organization.

3. It’s been a few years since your last rebrand. You went through the long and often expensive process of developing a full brand strategy and you’re off and running on marketing your nonprofit or small business. If your brand strategy has been collecting dust or hiding in a drawer, it is probably time to take it out and make sure it still aligns for your organization. The best case scenario would be that you are still aligned with the strategy as your organization has grown, but some aspects of your brand strategy need to evolve or be refreshed.

If you think it may be time to do a refresh of your brand without going through an entire rebrand, contact us!