Undergoing a re-brand

posted on 3rd August 2009 by Jon

A re-brand is always a tough excercise to carry out. You have those in the company who are quite content with the existing brand and don’t really see the point in wasting time changing things. Then there are those looking to put their own little stamp on the company brand and perhaps look to implement a much more dramatic change to try and refresh the brand and the company.

This is an issue weighing heavy on my mind at the moment as we have just moved offices and are therefore in the process of creating new stationary, shop-front signage and other materials. Our Creative Director, Greg is pushing for something a little more substantial whilst I’m still quite content with the branding we have in place. The discussion has therefore led to a bit of compromise whereby some small amends will be made to our logo to make it stand out a little more but nothing too drastic. If it ain’t broke - don’t fix it is the line we’re taking I guess.

Another reason for this decision is the recent makeover that our Broadband providers “Be Broadband” have undergone. “Be” are an excellent service provider whom we’ve used for over 12 months now without any kind of problem. I’d recommend them quite highly to anyone capable of using their services. However, they recently re-branded themselves and underwent a full-scale makeover of their website and blog. To their credit, they’ve tried to go for something really brave and have implemented a massive re-design of all of their materials. The results however, have not been quite what they had in mind. Their own community have gone absolutely ape, accusing the company of destroying the brand and creating a website comparable to 1980’s teletext. Take a look for yourselves at: www.bethere.co.uk. The new site is much harder to navigate around and the majority of members are now pining for their old site (which was actually pretty good) to be re-instated.

I’m still waiting for Be to issue some kind of “Just Kidding” press release and to announce that this was all just a PR stunt. In fact, our Head Programmer - Laurence came across the Be re-brand independently and also thought that it was some kind of practical joke.

Their Twitter account has been plastered with negative comments and the Be team have had to come out to issue a statement: “We get the gist of the feedback; our new website is live and you don't like the look of it. We'll listen and learn over the next few days.”

There was even a post on their newly re-branded blog thanking the 15-year-old web designer (!) that they commissioned to implement the new branding onto their blog thanking him for all of his work and within this they had to make the following clear: “Just to mention Lewis [their blog designer] did not design the brand or the bethere.co.uk site. He had taken the branding guidlines and translated them into this Blogger Template. We are simily giving him credit for he’s work.”

Will be interesting to see if they persist with the new design or go for a full-scale re-brand. I can’t see them reverting back to what they had as it would be viewed as a big backwards step.

Lessons to be learnt here for anyone attempting a re-brand.