In the process of rebranding and wondered if it can be done with the same name. Or, should the name also change to succeed with the rebranding.

@deairby That’s a tough question to answer without having all the information at hand. However, rule of thumb is that you should try to evaluate what’s the worth of the brand right now, how it resonates with customers, how long it’s been around, etc. If you believe changing the name of the brand will lose you that equity, than you may not want to go ahead.

A rebranding that is mostly cosmetic, i.e. new logo, new website, etc. is something important as well but it can be easily managed if done right. Changing your name or the nature of the product, however, is much riskier thing. Just ask the folks at Coca Cola when they rebranded to the New Coke…

My 2 cents.

@deairby You are welcome, Dea. One more thing to consider if and when you change the name of the brand: consider how it will be picked up in SEO, among other things.

Read this article for more insights: Before you name your company, consider who Google will rank it

Cheers,

Dawn, not sure what the middle part of your message says??? @dscottwalker  thanks for more info and links @fredericgonzalo @roguecitrus

this is for someone besides myself (actually for a church) that seems to lack good vibes with its name, there is a rebuild work going on. It is 102 years old but needs to start over! @roguecitrus

Back in a former life, we used to get a steady stream of work like this & the process usually entailed:

1) eBlast out to let people know the “exciting changes brewing”

2) we’d engage existing customers for their thoughts & opinions on proposed names changes (through those initial emails, started to develop some ideas around how to market & position based on the demo info provided by the customer… a little sneaky, although I thought it clever)

3) when we would get closer to a logo, we’d send out a couple logo concepts with different color palettes to see which resonated better (also gathered some info on the psychology of the customer in why they’re attracted to certain things over others… a couple instances led to some reconfigs of the end caps we worked on… (I love how there’s a learning experience in almost everything)

4) for those that provided feedback, when we realized the final design, that “Check Us Out Now” eBlast would thank the people who provided input (First Name, Last Initial) & offered them a tasty little promo code. Then when a bunch of other customers contacted us to say that they had sent us something in & we must not have gotten it… spammed… bumped… blocked… we converted them with a code that was lower as a way to give em something before releasing the promo site wide for the public.

Not sure if you have the luxury to do that… but we found by that early engagement & keeping them updated… created quite a bit of buzz around a couple of the clients. On a couple others, eh, customers didn’t seem to care… unless they had some kind of personal or emotional investment in the brand; out of the 10 active processes that I was involved with… 6 benefited from bringing the customers into the fold… 2 were so-so & 2 didn’t seem to care…

Oh, I just noticed that you said this was for a church. That’s one of my fields. Churches are reinventing themselves all over the place right now. So my advice is ignore the advice! Old church ways just don’t work any more!

The trick is to make changes without alienating roots. Tricky but doable with love.

We got into an intrachurch war and which caused a lot of prejudice against our old name . . . which was loved by us! We changed our name dramatically but talked about our old name a lot on our web site. New name is doing very well. People are plugging it into search engines. They are also plugging our old name into search engines. Best of both worlds. Everybody is happy. Surprisingly, people seem to understand the church with two names.

Our site is http://www.2x2virtualchurch.com (NEW) and we talk a lot about redeemereastfalls.com (OLD). We kept our historic site up and people go back and forth.

I can’t tell you the science of this or that we knew what we were doing — we were between a rock and hard place when we did it — but it seems to have worked.

Divine intervention or good SEO/marketing strategy? Who knows?

It is possible that if we were smarter we would be doing something still better, but we are happy with results we stumbled upon.

Wow @Deairby I had no idea that Campus Crusade changed their name… If it was not for the director of the Twin Cities Area, who knows where I would be today. That ministry was life changed for me… Is it really Cru? 

I re-branded several years ago keeping the same logo but changing the colours. It worked well and I now often play around with the 3 colours of the logos creating different backgrounds when doing various promotional materials. I think the key is to create something unique and striking. I’m no graphic designer, but I find the best logo’s are often the simplest, and one’s that incorporate the organization’s name and / values.

Another example is our church that re-branded from Friends First Church to Common Ground Church a few years back. The name has worked incredibly well as it ties in with many of the church activities and supplementary programs such as the Common Good Foundation – which is a social grass roots based organization. And the Common Ground Cafe which is an on-campus coffee shop. The main campus of the church is also located overlooking a famous Cape Town common, which was part of the original inspiration. You can check out the website at http://www.commongroundchurch.co.za 

Hope this helps.  

I took over a dying business and honestly the reason was marketing and branding. I kept the name because it had a standing resignation with the community but it was not communicated properly and the brand had phased out. I rebuilt the imagine with rigorous social media and network marketing. In 6 months we doubled the previous years profits. It can absolutely be done. It really depends on how much the name has defined the brand, if that makes sense. If the name has become so much of the brand it might be time to change the name with it. If it is the product or service I would keep the name because it already has some recognition. If that makes sense. Hard to explain in words I suppose. 

@deairby Appreciate that! I think this is a great platform. Truly fosters an environment to share and help other businesses whilst retaining a lot of valuable information myself. It is also a great way to extend your network. Thank you for being apart of this grand platform.