Managing change in a rebrand
As humans we naturally fear change when we don’t understand it. This can make a rebrand unnecessarily difficult when not managed with care and consideration. The good news is a little planning, storytelling and engagement across the journey goes a long way in gaining buy in across the organisation and maximising the positives impacts of a rebrand.
Hi everyone I’m Jodie, I’m the MD at Tiny Hunter. And today I wanna talk about change because change is hard. Or, it can be hard if it’s not managed well. And this dates back to cave woman days when change might mean death. Maybe I’m going to get eaten by a woolly Mammoth for breakfast. It’s not quite that serious but it is still important to think about this when you’re leading a big body of work like a rebrand.
When someone hears that change is coming immediately they think what does this mean for me? Why is this happening? And what’s this going to look like down the track? Now if we don’t give people the information that they need if we don’t tell the right stories and take them on the right journey then they’re going to fill in those blanks with uncertainty with fear. I don’t know what this means. This is going to be hard. It’s going to be difficult. Why can’t we just keep doing things the way we’ve always done this? Why are we spending this money? What’s this going to look like down the track? When you’re going through a rebrand you need to think about this at the beginning not halfway through, three quarters of the way through and certainly not at the end.
From the beginning, you want to think about what are those key moments across this journey that I am going to engage the broader team? How are they going to be involved? How are they going to hear about this? And you want to plan that so that they come along for the journey. It’s not just a big ‘tada’ moment at the end. Of course, you’ve got your key stakeholders and project team that are going to be much more involved and no, we are not talking about designed by committee. We’re just talking about taking people on the journey in terms of communicating at the right points in time. If you do this, it means you’re going to have a much more positive attitude towards a rebrand. People are going to understand it. They’re going to understand what it means. Why it’s happening and that it’s actually going to make things better for the future. And that means you’re going to get more value out of the rebrand and faster.
That’s it from me, it’s time for brekkie.
Written by: Jodie de Vries
Published: May 17, 2023