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Rebranding? Not if Your Internal Stakeholders Don’t Think So

By: Ashlyn Brewer | 02/07/2012

Your brand doesn't live in a PowerPoint presentation, your executive's head or in the look and feel of your website. Your brand is how people experience working with you and your employees. Freshening up color palette, logo and messaging is an important part of rebranding. You want to be current; you want to reflect where your organization is and where it aspires to go. 

But you could easily do all of that - contract with a branding firm and produce something all of your decision makers love - without actually changing your customer's brand experience.

Your brand doesn't truly change unless the way people experience your organization changes. The only people capable of cultivating that change in experience are your internal stakeholders, your company's employees.

Organizations that do rebranding right embark upon a multi-faceted process that involves asking the following questions:

1. How do our employees see our brand? This is a simple question, but one that's easy to forget. As we mentioned, branding isn't solely a top-down process. Employees tend to live up to the brand as they see it, so understanding how they see your organization is vital to defining where you need to grow. They live the brand every day and can provide insights you may not expect.
2. Are employees on board with the rebranding vision? Sometimes to grow, leaders must push organizations into uncomfortable territory; however, employees who are uncomfortable won't make the best brand ambassadors. This question helps your organization understand the state of your employee engagement, and your organization's change management needs to get your internal stakeholders excited about the new direction.
3. Do your employees feel involved? Your employees will ultimately be your biggest asset in rolling out a new brand (from explaining it to external stakeholders to bringing it to life on a day-to-day basis). That means you need to involve them from the get-go. Consider an internal advisory council when going through a rebranding effort, and be sure all employees feel like an important part of the process.     

Posted in Brand Positioning