What Actions to Take Before Launching a New Brand

There is a long list of actions that come along with launching a new brand identity, and I’ve done my best to document everything we had to do in hopes that it helps some of you!

Printed Collateral

First things first. You may have a lot of materials with your current brand and logo all over it. This could include:

• Business cards
• Fliers
• Banners
• Other printed materials
• Pens
• Pencils
• Notepads
• Uniforms, etc.

What are you going to do with all this stuff? Use it! If you’ve mapped out your rebrand launch, you should have a good timeline of how much time you have to use these tools before your new brand launches.

In this time period, hand out as many business cards as you can. Attend a conference and hand out goodie bags with a teaser about your new brand. Attend local networking events and pass out goodies. Attend local job fairs. This may sound like a heavy load while you’re also preparing your rebrand, but you might as well be launching a new business and you can’t network enough.

Technology

Now let’s look at your digital presence. You likely have a website, and maybe social media profiles, and potentially other platforms you are utilizing for various reasons.

If you aren’t changing your name but only your logo/design then your process will be a little easier. This mainly looks like updating your logos wherever they are shown as well as colors and design elements.

If you are changing your name and design, here are some areas you will likely have to update:

• Website (URL, design, etc)
• Email (info@newcompany.com, and everything you’ve ever done with that email)
• All social media profiles
• State/federal/IRS paperwork
• Bank documents
• Business cards and other print items
• Advertisements
• Your company information on other partners websites

We made a lot of lists, spreadsheets, and whiteboard sessions as we collected all of the things we would have to do to complete our new rebrand. We ultimately created a new Google Drive folder for all of these items and (tried to) stay as organized as possible.

Priorities

We began researching some of the items on this second list so we could map out the order in which we needed to do certain things. What we came up with was the following priority order of actionable items:

1. Update all legal business paperwork
2. Announce your upcoming rebrand through social posts, pop-ups on your current site, emails, etc.
3. Update billing information and talk to the bank. Set a date with bank and clients for the new name to go forward.
4. Put in an order for new collateral (business cards, flyers, etc.)
5. Build new website. Have a “coming soon” page up with a form to collect emails while you build.
6. The day of launch: change your email and set an autoresponder form your old email.
7. Switch your social media accounts over.
8. Launch your rebrand marketing plan!

This list may look different for you depending on what you have to switch over, but the biggest thing we learned is to make lots of lists and organize like crazy!

If you are thinking of re-branding your organization or starting a new company, give us a call! We’d love to chat with you and see if we can help!