A successful rebrand requires exceptional communication between various departments within an organisation.

The decision to rebrand will often come from the marketing department or the board, however the actual process of rebranding requires support from nearly all areas of the business. I am not just talking about internal comms and employee engagement, although that is very important. I am talking about the physical changeover of the logo and visual identity requiring the input of property, IT, HR, marketing, procurement, fleet etc.  All these departments need to work cohesively in order to achieve the rebranding objectives.

However, this is easier said than done. Rebranding isn’t something a company does very often, perhaps every 10 to 15 years or so. The YMCA who recently announced it’s rebranding to The Y, hadn’t changed its logo for 43 years.  The new identity, created by Siegel + Gale, is not necessarily going to be rolled out across each of the associated organisations around the world, however, if this were the case, it would require detailed planning and communication particularly as the YMCA adopts a federated model of governance. This model allows the various YMCA’s to offer vastly different programs and services to suit their communities but they still all support the same core principles. The YMCA will need to communicate effectively between its federated organisations in order to optimise the impact of the new identity and to ensure that people’s perception of the YMCA remains consistent around the world.

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Having helped hundreds of companies through the application of a rebrand, it is clear to us that the most successful are those that setup a steering group with key personnel from the relevant departments. This ensures that each area of the business can contribute to the rollout strategy and provide invaluable insight into what is required to changeover the visual identity across every touchpoint.

However this rarely happens, more often than not the majority of departments aren’t involved until the creative process has been finished and brand guidelines are then placed into their laps. Branded assets are then transformed at different times, to different standards of quality and at a higher cost.

It is common practice to outsource the brand strategy and creative design to experts, however it is the process of applying the visual identity that is often the biggest test for the organisation. Changing a logo or visual identity may seem like a simple task but rolling this out across printed collateral, signage, liveries, clothing, environments, digital assets (to name a few) is much more complex and requires detailed planning and extensive internal communication.