How Much Does It Cost to Rebrand a Company?

04 Dec How Much Does It Cost to Rebrand a Company?

As a business owner, you know when your branding isn’t working as you’d like it to.

Maybe it’s not right for the new direction your company is heading in, or it’s outdated in its themes and ideas; perhaps it doesn’t entice customers, or perhaps in light of growing competition it’s time to mix things up a bit.

There are numerous variables when it comes to a rebranding project, and because the scope of the job can differ wildly, pricing is a challenge.

Branding is More Than Just a Logo

Before you start jotting down ideas for your rebrand, you’ll need to ask yourself the following:

• How Has the Environment Changed? – You need to think carefully about how your marketplace has changed, along with how your customers (and potential customers) behaviour has changed.
• What Makes this Company Different? – You need to understand what your rebrand will be looking to achieve in terms of your values, brand positioning and consumer connection.
• What’s Our Brand Identity? – Only once you’ve answered the previous two questions can you decide how things should look.

The Process

You could approach this in a few different ways: if you’re an SME with a smaller budget, the process will be similar, but it can be done on a more informal basis and probably won’t require a sizeable outsourced team.

For in-depth corporate rebranding projects with considerable budgets, more specific skill sets are needed. This could include an experienced brand strategist and a brand identity manager, both of which will be able to bring your rebranding ideas into a visual format.

From here, you may also need to supplement this team with people who can help to maintain a consistent brand. This could mean graphic designers, copywriters and photographers.

How Much Could Rebranding Cost?

This is a, ‘how long is a piece of string?’ sort of scenario, as a rebrand can cost anywhere between a few thousand to hundreds of thousands for something more global.

However, a useful rule of thumb is to look at your overall revenue and how much you’re currently spending on marketing. On average in 2018, marketing budgets made up roughly 11% of a company’s expenditure budget, which according to usablemedia.co.uk, means a company should be looking to spend 10% of this marketing budget on a rebrand.

It’s really a matter of what kind of investment level feels right for you. Of course, this depends on your business goals, and how you’d like to use your rebrand to achieve higher profit, a more significant customer base and a recognisable business.

Project Brief

Even though every project brief is very different, they all follow similar steps:

• Research – will vary from business to business with things like business size, and what products and services are offered.
• Design – will typically be presented through a variety of concepts that need to be whittled down
• Implementation – aims to push forward with all of the fundamentals and ideas that reflect the company with the hopes of helping to achieve the goals agreed at the outset

No matter what sector you operate in, or what budgets you have available, you rebrand needs to broadly satisfy the following criteria:

• Market positioning – this could mean trying to increase market share or reinforce a reputation of being best-in-class
• Target audience profiling – the rebrand needs to satisfy the needs and wants of your target audience
• Positioning narrative development – you need a strong narrative that inspires employees, stakeholders and customers alike
• Key messages – what do you stand for? Who are your customers? How will you differentiate from your competitors?

Budgets vs Value

If your budget is towards the lower end of the scale, then your strategy can be agreed upon by key people in your organisation and included within the final project costs.

But for projects that need a more bespoke approach, the starting point for a fundamental framework will typically cost a few thousand pounds. However, as you begin to go deeper with further elements, such as audience interviews, your costs will increase.

Then you’ll have to factor in brand identity costs, such as office design, website rebuilds, marketing literature design, signage and vehicle liveries for example, all of which are necessary costs in a rebranding exercise.

Cutting budget costs can often create a false economy, in that spending less may not achieve the goals and objectives you’ve set – which means you’re throwing money down the drain. Even a so-called low-cost rebrand, can prove to be a costly misstep if it doesn’t work out.

The trick is to break everything down into simple steps and assign costs to them from the outset, so you can funnel your budget into the areas that demand higher quality.

This could mean that you might increase time spent at the drawing board so that you can create a more in-depth brief for designers.

If you have any questions about anything we’ve covered in today’s blog, or you’re interested in discussing any of our services, get in touch with us today.