24 Oct The important lessons learnt from doing a brand refresh during a global pandemic
When you reflect back on who you were as a teenager and then who you were at 25, you can clearly see that you were two very different people. Your thought patterns have changed, as have your appearance, job, level of education and even your friends.
We like to refer to this as “growing up” or maturing and consider it to be one of life’s natural progressions. However, the changes you made were purposeful and deliberate.
2020 was that kind of year for us at The Catalyst Africa and indeed for many companies around the world. We questioned a lot of things. For example, the Work From Home (WFH) trend was an eye opener for many industries.
We all lost quite a lot but, in many ways, we learned new things about ourselves. We were forced to challenge the status quo and we came out more resilient and adaptable in ways that were unimaginable pre-COVID-19.
For The Catalyst Africa, the year afforded us the opportunity to reflect on past gains, ways of doing business and how the market saw us. As a business, we have evolved quite a lot since inception, and we’ve done things that we are very proud of.
But this opportunity to reset was a blessing in disguise. One that we needed and perhaps would have been too busy to focus on had things remained “normal”.
The lessons learnt
In essence, we’ve learnt three important lessons from doing a brand refresh in a global pandemic:
Letting go is an opportunity to give space for growth:
You would expect that as an agency we would do a brand refresh ourselves and, in fact, we attempted to do it. However, we soon realised that we could never give it the attention it deserves – there is always client work that comes first.
To evolve we had to completely let go of our roles as brand custodians, and invite brand consultants that we knew would dedicate themselves to the refresh in a way we desired. This allowed us to take the back seat and listen to an external force tell us about what they thought about our brand.
What emerged from these discussions were several iterations of a new logo echoing our core purpose of being a change agent in the marketing space in Africa. A new beginning. A chance to better define our position in the market.
A new direction is refreshing
Too often we get comfortable in our ways, and resort to the cowardly phrase: “We have always done things this way”. Having been in business for as long we have, we gathered a lot of experience, but the way things were done 10 years ago doesn’t mean it’s how it should be done now.
Also, what better way to get energised during a slump? Rebranding our agency gave us an opportunity to dig deep and reignite our purpose, answer uncomfortable questions about the agency, have deep conversations about colour palette, merge our individualities with the brand identity, and even get to know each other better as the brand custodians.
You think you know your colleagues well but wait until you must decide what shade of green is best! True passions were unearthed in this colourful process.
Give it plenty of time
A rebrand does not happen overnight and a logo is just the beginning. Once you start the process of changing your logo and positioning, you inevitably start to look at every facet of the business.
As all of it must be in sync to deliver the brand value, the logo is almost purely aesthetic. The brand is lived through the people, the service delivery and operations. A new direction is galvanising, and it gives people the opportunity to question every action and devise new ways of doing better to align with new direction.
It is not a quick fix or phase – yes, you push towards deadlines to achieve wins along the way – but for it to be truly embraced it must be a continuous journey not a destination. Whatever timeframe you have in mind, you may want to double or triple it to give yourself a long enough runway to get everything done. And it will be worth the time.
It may seem easy at first, but it’s tough to balance a rebrand while also managing multiple other projects. Prepare yourself mentally and settle in for the long haul. It will be well worth it and you will learn a few things about yourselves in the process.
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