When Should You Do a Rebrand?
A rebrand is more than just the design
A friend reached out a couple of weeks ago to see if he should rebrand given some recent struggles.
That question made me reflect on my own ongoing rebrand of Mai, our AI writer.
For Mai, we will not only make significant changes to the brand name & design, we'll also make big changes to the features & code.
For most businesses, a rebrand is not needed if you're having sales problems.
A rebrand is only worth doing if there is a fundamental shift in the business model or market.
How does one define a shift in the business model?
To start, for us to be on the same page, let’s use Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas as a common framework. This states that businesses are composed of the following 9 components:
- Customer Segments
- Customer relationships
- Channels
- Revenue stream
- The Value Proposition
- Key Activities
- Key Resources
- Key Partners
- Cost structure
And here’s the key idea:
A rebrand is worth it if and only if there’s a fundamental market shift in any of these components.
For Mai, we’re doing a rebrand due to market shifts in these four areas:
Customer segments:
Mai was initially designed for creatives & in-house marketers for agencies and businesses. But the majority of our customers are business owners.
Channels:
Most of Mai's sales are through Referrals, Complementary Sales, and Meta. We initially assumed most sales would be through ads.
Value proposition:
Given the initial customer segment, we designed a bulk ads creation tool. Given the actual people that paid, and based on what we’ve learned about how they use it, the feature set needs to evolve to better cater to common business owner use cases.
Revenue Streams:
Most sales are through what I call a hybrid service: not only do they subscribe to the software, they also need our help to use it for them. Specifically, they just want the output of 100 articles in 1 month, with additional help editing to ensure that the articles bring in the traffic & conversions we expect.
It turns out that only a minority of customers use the self-service option.
In short, we positioned Mai originally to be a “productivity tool for in-house marketers, who’ll discover us on Facebook or Instagram Ads."
But instead, our market wants our Mai to be a “content assistant for business owners / executives, and wants the option to either DIY or hire us to direct this assistant if they’re busy”.
The market's response thus requires a fundamental shift in the product's positioning, and this merits a rebrand.
When considering a rebrand, ask yourself if your business model has changed fundamentally.
If there's no major shift in the business model, consider a "design refresh", which is smaller in scope.
A design refresh updates the language, fonts, colors, but assumes the same business model & strategy.
Rebranding is a loaded term, and you might get misled into paying a large bill.
A design refresh gives you a reasonable scope and price.
Or better, you might not need a design refresh at all. Just more aggressive sales and marketing.
Kenn Costales is the Founder of Monolith Growth Consulting (a growth marketing agency) and Mai (a writing software for marketers & business owners). He is an honoree of Forbes 30 under 30 and Tatler Asia’s Generation T.