A guide for CMOs and marketing professionals
As the CMO or marketing lead for your organization, you hold the pressure of successful growth. Is your brand holding you back from hitting ambitious KPIs? If your intuition has been telling you it might be, here are some questions to help you validate if it’s more than your personal opinion about that hideous color you’ve never liked.
Is it time to change your branding?
How’s your inbound interest looking? Are you having to work harder to get potential partners, clients, or customers excited to connect? Fresh branding can create a fresh emotional connection that excites people so they come to you.
- Has your company outgrown your branding? Is your branding a true reflection of your purpose, promise, and value you’re putting into the world now?
- Are you struggling to stand out in a crowded market? Is your visual identity tied to old trends or not differentiated enough to be timelessly you in a sea of competitors?
- Are people confusing you with something you’re not? When you hear “Oh, I thought…” and it’s not at all the right thing for them to think… they might be getting mixed signals from your brand.
- What’s your next big milestone as a business? Do you feel your current brand can support that?
If you’re reading these questions and thinking, yeah, we definitely need to do something about our branding (hint: the above are great ways to position it internally too), the next question is, what are your options? Yes, there are options!
Do you need a full rebrand or a brand refresh?
- What about your branding is outdated? Are there pieces, in isolation, that undermine the brand? You might only need to refresh certain elements but not rebrand entirely.
- Has your business mission or core brand strategy shifted since your last rebrand? A repositioning is a good time to think about larger brand shifts or rebrands.
- How much equity or brand recognition does your brand currently have in the market? We caution against throwing out equity without a strong case to do so. A refresh or evolution might be better.
- Are there any stakeholder sensitivities or attachments to your current branding to consider? Knowing what you can and cannot touch will help determine how much we shift.
Can I just do a visual update?
At Four Fin, we’re all about right-sizing our efforts to your situation. If all you need is a new look on the outside to match your insides and stay current—then let’s get right to it! That would be the simplest of refreshes, touching only the visual identity: colors, fonts, and possibly logo tweaks.
However, we will always advocate and speak up when we think it’s in your best interest to do so —that’s our Best Interest Disruption value at play—and we believe in building a brand on a sound strategic foundation. So, if you know there’s a mess of misalignment or weak foundations for your brand, let’s do it right and help your team get on the same page about the beautiful future this brand is going to carry you to. That would be more of a rebrand approach, but don’t worry! Rebrands don’t have to be a long, drawn out affair! When you work with the right team, it can be easy, breezy.
Should you do it in-house, with an agency, or tag a robot?
Ah, the tactics question. We are clearly biased to answer: “we think you should work with an agency.” It’s hard to see the forest from the trees when you are too close to it, and robots are only great for robotic tasks. Pulling the unique heart of your company out and displaying it for the world is the last thing you should trust robots with. Even clients of ours that are helping build AI come to us for that human touch.
However, and here’s the good news… not all agencies are created equal. At Four Fin, we are your secret weapon, not your enemy. Our egos get neatly folded and put under our desks as we work collaboratively with you. We glide in a sprint fashion to hone clarity into the brand in less than a month, so you can hit those KPIs sooner. Say hello to our 3-week Brand Session for rebranding.
How should you show up?
Our last list below has the items you should come to the refresh or rebrand with, because there is at least one overlap to the world of robots: your outputs are only as good as your inputs. We love to know what we’re working with and our creative constraints—constraints are a good thing, so bring ‘em on!
- What are your business and marketing goals (and hopes and dreams!)? We are here to help you reach them, so we have to know what they are. Also, why are you considering a new or refreshed brand? The brand will outlive this year’s KPIs of course, but knowing what you are working towards makes our work more valuable. Brand concepts are north stars, so give us some of the fuller constellations to help point us all towards.
- What’s hot and what’s not? Who are the main stakeholders and what are they already considering? Is there a competitor’s brand you love? Are there any legacy sensitivities or sentimental feelings stakeholders have? Maybe the logo was created by a co-founder and shouldn’t be touched. Maybe certain phrases nod to a history you don’t want to repeat. Be real and spill the tea. The earlier we’re aware, the earlier we can incorporate that into the design process to avoid any messes later on.
- Show us what you’re workin’ with: What strategic guides does your company have? Personas, values, competitive reviews, mission and vision? We’ll want to know what is working and what needs to evolve. And, on the tactical side, what branded assets are in frequent rotation at your company that the branding will be applied to?
- How much investment do you want to make in your brand? Come to us with both your monetary range and how much time you’re allocating to the project, with any key dates you want the rebrand or refresh done by. We’ll work with your budget and right-size a scope that delivers quality branding with clear expectations.
- Be you – open and honest you. Be present and ready to give honest feedback. We’ll guide you on what feedback is helpful to dial everything in. We believe the heart of any branding effort is collaboration and have created a proven, sprint-style process that was built to incorporate your input and maximize creativity.
We are a very collaborative agency who supports our clients’ businesses as if they’re our own. We will take your inputs and non-negotiables to heart, and help you meet your goals. We also have our non-negotiables for our team – namely: honesty, alignment, and quality work – and through that we’ll deliver for you a perfect refresh or rebrand.
Again, if you are looking for a full rebrand and fast, we can get that done in 3 weeks through our Brand Session. You’ll get a solid brand strategy along with a brand new visual identity that sets you up perfectly. Your expertise shouldn’t be undermined by a legacy brand. We’re here to lift that burden.
Have a question about your specific situation?
Reach out! We love a good strategic and tactical chat with marketers who love branding. That’s the start of how we make waves.
