How to Successfully Rollout Your New Brand

Repeat after me:

I am going to be so sick of this new brand after only 2 months but I have to keep going with the launch plan.

Good. Now write it down on a piece of paper and tack it up where you’ll see it every day. You’re going to need the reminder when your coworkers doubt you (“Haven’t you said enough about this?”) and when you doubt yourself (“If I see this one more time I might throw up.”).

There are two main mistakes with fumbled brand rollouts:

1. Not having a 12+ month rollout plan
2. Running a rollout for a couple weeks or months and dropping it

Throughout a long-term rollout, you will intimately experience every single word and every single pixel of every social post, announcement, training, email, article, and ad multiple times over. The only way to combat the inevitable fatigue you and your team will experience is this two-part approach:

1. Have a set plan ahead of time.
2. Be disciplined. You need to stick to it. (Of course, there will be times when you need to alter the plan, but most of the time these adjustments should be minor.)

Here’s your no-nonsense, high-level road map to successfully rolling out your new brand.

Your new brand is done, or nearly done, and you’re ready to shout it to the rooftops. What’s next?

First, plan your internal rollout.
List every team and department that will be affected by the new brand. These are not necessarily your stakeholders, but teams that you will rely on to help bring the brand to life. Your stakeholders, at this point, should already be bought in and ready to be active supporters and promoters.

Your list will likely be able to fall into these categories:

• Basic Knowledge: Teams/people that need to know about the brand, have basic working knowledge, and be content enough with it to adopt some new swag
  • Example: (usually) the entire company
• Adoption: Teams/people that will need to make changes in how they work in order to reflect the new brand
  • Example: Customer Service, Sales, HR
• Implementation: Teams/people that will be directly responsible for implementing and executing on the new brand
  • Example: Marketing, Creative

Basic Knowledge teams typically only need one (sometimes two) sessions. This will typically include an announcement session and a subsequent session that provides light training. And don’t forget the reminders! Plan to send out regular reminders for any actions they need to take or for big changes coming up that they need to remember.

Adoption teams will need more coordination with their leaders. These teams will typically have real changes that will need to be made within each of their areas. Work with their department leaders to determine what these changes need to be and then schedule training sessions accordingly. These sessions may need to be 2-3 hours long and/or you may need multiple sessions. You want time to train them on the new brand in a way that highlights the components of the brand that are most applicable to each team, while also applying the new brand concepts to their day-to-day work and the changes to come.

Implementation teams will require the most in-depth training sessions on the new brand. Take it slow, allowing for the time to savor and fully understand the new words that capture and describe the brand. Build in sample activities to promote personal investment in the new changes and to develop their long-term memory. Be available for regular questions and include extra time for revisions as team members learn the complexities and nuances of the new brand.

And those stakeholders? They don’t need to be like the sports fans who paint their whole bodies and stand outside in freezing 40-degree weather without so much as a scarf on. But they do need to be ready to bust myths, shepherd naysayers who pose enough risk to ruin the new brand for others (you know the kind – the Negative Nellies who manage to poison even the best of things), hold teams accountable for upholding changes, and be a confident spokesperson and motivator.

How long the internal rollout takes will be unique to your company, but plan to have all internal announcements and training sessions complete before the brand is announced externally. Your Implementation and Adoption teams will have the most advanced notice of the new brand – they need time to make any necessary changes so that your audience and end users will have a seamless experience with your new brand when it fully launches. For smaller companies, you may only need 3 months. For larger companies, you may need 9 months or more.

Additionally, set aside time on your calendar to check in with team leaders on how the changes are going. Do they have questions? Are team members struggling with any parts of the new brand? A new brand, when young and recently adopted, needs to be nurtured and cultivated so that it grows strong roots.

Hint: Not sure what exactly to cover in those training sessions? You’re in luck! At CID, our brand experts can work with you to develop the course content and even lead the sessions.

Next, plan your external rollout.
Similar to your internal rollout, start by listing the main audiences who need to know about the new brand. Each audience will likely have slightly different key points of the new brand that they care more about.

You can get as creative as you like with your brand announcement and subsequent communications about it. But there are three key elements to a successful rollout that you want to make sure to include:

1. Make the change as easy as possible.

For example, if your company’s name is changing, you need to take as much of the burden of remembering the new name off of your audience (that is, of course, if you wish to keep them as a customer). When Scott’s Cheap Flights changed their name to Going, it took me nearly a year to recognize their new name in my inbox. A year! It helped that they kept the old SCF name alongside the new Going name for a few months while my brain adjusted.

2. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

We know the old adage of it taking seven or more marketing touches to have an impact. The same is true of a brand launch. Those key points you need each audience to know? Say them over and over. More times than you think necessary. The majority of these communications can take place in the first 3-4 months post-launch. But then you want to continue to…

3. Think long-term.

Sure, maybe 80% of your audience knows that you changed your name (or, fill in your big brand change here) just 4 months post-launch. But what about that last 20%? You don’t want to lose those valuable customers. This is where long-term tactics come into play. For example, that URL redirect you set up? Keep it going to your brand launch announcement landing page for 12-24 months. After that, you can keep the redirect but send it to your new homepage.

Of course, your external rollout isn’t just about announcements and reminders to your audience. It’s also about making sure every single public brand asset is updated immediately at launch time. List every item that needs to be updated and assign an owner from your Implementation team. Those public-facing changes are extremely far-reaching, so make sure you track which changes can be scheduled to be published and which need to be done manually.

Remember: a good brand rollout isn’t just about creating short-term excitement, it’s also about building the long-term memory of your current and potential customers. In many ways, this is similar to creating awareness (both recognition and recall) of a brand, you’re simply doing it with something new.

You’re ready to write your plan! If you’re stuck, rely on CID.
External brand rollouts are exciting, but they're also full of complexity! How do you create messaging addressing the reason behind the changes? How many emails, exactly, do you send? Do you need to run print ads?

Our brand experts at CID are here to help you craft, and even implement, the perfect launch plan. Done right, you retain your current customers and set your company up for future growth.

Have a brand that's ready to launch? Contact us for help making it a successful rollout!