Not many people know this, but when I first started my consultancy I did branding. I used to work with mid-sized companies to help “rebrand” them, which is a euphemism for new logo, website, or packaging.
That’s not actually what branding is, but if I say anymore this entire article will be me screaming at you like a jerk and you’re not who I’m mad at.
ANYWAY. I’d usually get called to come in when a company was undergoing some sort of pivot. Like changing their positioning, focusing on a new niche market, abandoning a vertical….you know what a pivot is.
You do everyday. Test and pivot, test and pivot. Test and pivot. Until something sticks.
Which is where branding gets confusing for entrepreneurs because WHEN DOES ANYTHING EVER STICK??
That’s why we spin off into an existential crisis when we do this “branding” stuff too early.
The existential crisis sneak attack is the evil cycle of re-writing your about page 600 times and then crying into your cereal when you realize everything you’ve done for the last few years was wrong.
You wake up 5-20 days later to discover you were on the right track this entire time and carry on doing exactly what you were doing before.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP IS GREAT AND SO EASY EVERYONE SHOULD DO IT.
Anyway, most of you know that Lady Hillary of House Weiss underwent a huge rebrand recently as evidenced by her awesome nail polish in the video below. Which is why we decided we needed to talk rebrands and nailing a brand pivot in this week’s episode of Hillary and Margo Yell at Websites.
We cover when and why you should rebrand, how long it should take, and small things you can do if you want to test new positioning without doing a full rebrand.
As always, tell everyone and their mom why you loved this episode but mostly tell us by liking the video, commenting on it, and @ ing me on the socials.
#HAMYAW: How To Rebrand Like a Beast
– Margo, the M in HAMYAW
PS: If you’d like to learn more about branding, here’s an explainer I used to give to clients. Page 13 and 21, are particularly useful. And because I can’t help myself, here’s the TL;DR:
Brand: The set of impressions people have in their mind about who you are.
It a combination of (a) what you tell people and (b) their subjective experience with your organization.
You can’t *really* control people’s subjective experience, so “branding” became just the first part: what you tell people about who you are. There’s about a million and 27 ways to do that, but we’ve decided it really just means “a new logo or website.”
Or what we in the industry call, “visual brand assets.”
HENCE MY RAGE EARLIER.
Because in order to get “a new logo or website” you need to do a shit ton of inner work on what most business refer to as “the fluffy stuff I don’t want to pay for.” Things like brand language, voice, values, persona, identity, mission, and other euphemisms for “PDF that no one will ever use.”
So that’s what I did. I made a lot of PDFs no one used.
Half kidding. Not really though.
I’M NOT ANGRY YOU’RE ANGRY
