How to lead brands through transformations

Brand communication is not only mandatory in the consumer sector. B2B companies also need to stand out from the crowd and make themselves and their products stand out. With significant messages, packaged and staged with high attention and recognition value. Because awareness and significance are prerequisites for a place in the front row. Who wouldn't know? So everyone is striving to take the economy of attention into account more or less consistently and consistently. That's a good thing.
 

When many things change, brand communication cannot remain the same

But then this: Disruption. Transformation. Digitalization. Companies have to reinvent or reposition themselves, or at least change. They restructure and reorganize, at least adjust processes, explore new business areas and rely on new technologies. All good. But it is a veritable change process that is sweeping through the company. Exciting for some, worrying for others.

What happens when the dust of the restructuring, the "wind of change", has settled? Who or what will now rear its head? The old identity, for example? Viewed in the new light, are the old certainties still true, or rather: the parameters of the brand? If everything, or at least so much, is changing, then brand communication cannot remain the same. But is a new coat of paint enough? New font, new logo? It would be nice, but it's usually too little too late. 
 

Brand management: the brand only pays off for the company if it is properly adjusted

The new identity, if the restructuring described above induces one, must be redeveloped and redefined. How and who is the new "we"? The brand must be recharged accordingly. What should it now embody? How should it be structured so that it can develop both an external identity and internal identification potential? In other words: if a company is made fit for the future, brand management and brand communication must also be upgraded for the future in order to be able to communicate the new in the company and its products accordingly. So far, that's clear. But.
 

Brand management: transformation and re-branding fuel each other

During the transformation, companies usually have a technology tunnel vision that initially ignores such issues. However, re-branding or refreshing the brand is a process that is no less essential on the way to a new standing in the market. Because the company can only win. This is particularly successful if

• the answer to the question of the new "we and how" is managed as an agile process in relevant employee groups. This electrifies, motivates, involves the workforce and, by shaping it together, takes away the fear of the new.
• Re-branding should not be started only after the technological transition process has been completed. Otherwise, valuable time will pass before the company can reposition itself in the competition for attention.

So if transformation and re-branding are started in more or less the same breath, one process can and will fuel the other. After all, identity and brand image are more important points of reference than ever - both for the internal and external world. They are not per se and not immediately, not from a hollow gut.

Understanding corporate and brand management as coherent processes

Identity and brand image will, however, rapidly gain in content and expressiveness in our constantly communicating world. They represent what a company stands for: its products or services, its attitude, its convictions and, not least, the extent to which it assumes responsibility for its employees, society and nature. Corporate and brand management should therefore be understood and designed as necessarily coherent processes. Both corporate and brand management are fluid processes that need to be constantly adjusted.
 

Tackling brand management with external support

Even if the company has expertise in brand communication (all the better): For brand management in transformation, the fresh perspective of an outsider brings invaluable benefits. Because outsiders temporarily immerse themselves and familiarize themselves with the company - and yet remain outside, neutral. An external brand professional (doesn't have to be an entire agency) is naturally unencumbered and unbiased when assisting those involved in brand management and can therefore moderate, curate and inspire all the more easily, and can motivate more easily to evaluate the contributions and results of the workshops and bring them together at the end of the day.