In the first article of this series, we talked about how to determine whether a rebranding initiative is in your company's best interests. In the second article, we covered the basics of building your new brand identity.
Now it's time to discuss best-practices as you launch and promote your exciting new brand, both internally and externally.
As a backdrop, consider that when we rebranded our enterprise work management company AtTask to its new Workfront identity, it was no small undertaking. Our project plan comprised 412 individual tasks and took 4½ months of intense effort. No one wants to go through that level of work and then botch the unveiling.
With that in mind, here are six essential tips to help you achieve a successful launch, starting with some of your most important stakeholders: the people in your company.
Three Tips for the Internal Launch
1. Give employees a heads-up
Many companies fail to realize that getting their employees behind the brand is the first and most important step in a successful launch. You want as many cheerleaders and advocates as possible. If you can't convince the people on your payroll that this is a good move, your chances with your broader audience diminish significantly.
We gave AtTask employees a 10-week heads-up that the name was going to change, and we explained why (our product had expanded to encompass the complete lifecycle of enterprise work—far more than tasks alone). We told them change was coming before we had even decided on a new name, giving them time to process the idea, to get their questions answered, and to buy into the reasoning.
2. Get employees involved
There are two big reasons for getting your entire company involved in the rebranding process: it's their company, too, and you'll build feelings of loyalty and belonging by acknowledging that fact; and 400+ tasks can't be accomplished by one person alone.
One month before our external launch, we unveiled our new brand internally to our then 500+ employees. It may sound risky to expect hundreds of people to all keep their mouth shut for four straight weeks, but our decision to put faith in our employees paid off. All we had to say to them was, "We're trusting you to keep this confidential," with instructions not to tell friends or neighbors, online or in the real world.
I received several emails asking, "I love this new Workfront-branded backpack I got, but do I need to leave it at work until January? What if my wife or my sister-in-law sees it?" There are definitely still some letter-of-the-law, trustworthy people in this world.
3. Make it a big deal
If we had announced our new name and logo via email, we would have gotten hundreds of different reactions—most of them depending on the mood of the viewer in that moment. It would have fallen flat. So we decided to orchestrate the mood—and to do it in a big way.
We brought everyone together into one large conference hall, with 2,000 balloons hidden in the ceiling. We had lights and a stage and a 30-minute buildup, with lots of branded collateral to throw out into the crowd. We built anticipation. We pretended we were about to reveal the name, then backtracked, "Wait, wait... maybe first we should tell them the names we didn't pick." And we trotted out a list of hilarious, fake runners-up.
Then, the reveal. We produced an action-packed video complete with stunt men, drone cameras, and special effects; we played it on a pair of giant movie screens. At the climax of the video, the branded balloons poured from the ceiling and Workfront's new lion logo was spotlighted on the wall, larger than life.
You couldn't not be excited in that moment, even if you might have been initially lukewarm about the name itself.
With our internal team amped up and ready to stand behind the new brand, we had the momentum we needed to propel it successfully into the marketplace.
Three Tips for the External Launch
1. Make it a big deal