• test

    test

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Hospitality
  • New Year, New Brand? How to Successfully Rebrand a Leisure Industry Business

New Year, New Brand? How to Successfully Rebrand a Leisure Industry Business

A new year is on the horizon and there is no better time to give your business an identity revamp. A brand refresh can be an effective way of staying ahead of the competition, keeping current customers excited about what you are doing, and attracting a whole new audience that you may not have appealed to before. In this checklist we cover every stage of the process to help you ensure your rebrand goes smoothly.

 

Make a plan: Set a budget and timeline

So, you’ve made the decision to rebrand your restaurant, gym, spa or hotel but aren’t sure where to begin. Firstly, setting a budget and creating a timeline that strictly sticks to this budget is important. This will prevent you overspending and keep you on track with developments so that you don’t fall behind.

 

 

Inform stakeholders

Next inform any relevant stakeholders of the changes you plan to implement. It’s essential that clients and business relationships will not be affected, so tell all staff and partners of the proposed changes and when they can expect to see them come into play. Then you’re going to want to build some anticipation, posting across social media channels that a big change is coming can engage your audience and ensure they are present for the launch.

 

 

Establish objective & availability

Initially, you need to ‘de-brand’. Detach yourself from anything relevant to the ‘old’ identity and begin to think as if you are creating an entirely new business.

What ‘story’ is your new brand going to tell? Are you aiming for a change in character, a change in the look of the establishment, a change of values? A definitive reason can help focus the development of the rebrand.

Are you going to re-name the business? If so you will need to check that no one else is currently trading under that name, as well as determine whether the website domain name is available and social handles too.

What is your brand long-term goal? What are you hoping to gain from this change? Remember this goal and use it to drive and monitor your progress.

Who is your audience? Are you re-branding to attract a new audience as well as maintaining the current one? Keep this in mind throughout each stage to stay on course and not divert from the goal.

 

 

Design

The most important step when creating a new identity for your business is the logo and imagery you are going to use. This will set the theme of your brand and become static throughout your entire company, both internally and digitally, so put a lot of time and thought into it and make sure it is going to fit with your brand’s desired identity. Be sure not to incorporate any passing trends in to your design work, as this will put you at risk of becoming outdated and irrelevant. 

 

 

Implementation

Now you’ve done the hard work of planning your rebrand it’s time to implement it across all platforms, including within your business. Update all collateral with the new logo and imagery, reflect the changes on staff name badges, business cards, banners, decals, brochures, menus, flyers and all promotional material.

The décor inside your business needs to be in keeping with the tone, so use relevant colours for bedding and towels (for hotels, spas and gyms), tableware, key cards, signage and anything else that is displayed to reflect what your brand is about. Out with the old and in with the new; ensure absolutely no old branding is on show to avoid confusion and risk of looking unprofessional.

Now you need to put your new identity in place across all digital platforms. Update your website and social channels with new imagery, update any links if you have changed the name of your business, revise all metadata such as titles, descriptions and alt-text and update your SEO terms and keywords.

 

 

Launch

With everything in place, it’s time to go ahead and announce the launch of your new brand. This could be done by a direct mail to customers, email marketing, social media announcements, blog post or news item explaining the reasoning for re-branding your business. Be inclusive, you can’t make these changes overnight with no mention of the fact you are changing the way your brand works, so be open and honest and tell your audience why these changes are going to be beneficial to their experience.

 

We partner with many hospitality organisations and would love to help make things easier for you when considering a rebrand. If you’d like to find out more, please contact us on 01642 525100 or email enquiries@agnortheast.com

Comment

There is no comment on this post. Be the first one.

Leave a comment