How to avoid underestimating the effort and overspending a branding project budget
Rebranding is rarely just a creative exercise—it’s an operational one. In this webinar, brand leaders share lessons from real-world rebrands, revealing why implementation, alignment, and early planning are critical to avoiding costly surprises and ensuring a successful brand change.
With a discussion led by Blake Howard, learn from Russell Thompson Client Partner Director at VIM Group and Joanna Jenkins Managing Director at VIM Group.
Transcript
Blake Howard:
Thank you so much for joining. So, my name's Blake Howard. I am a creative director and co-founder at Matchstic. We are a brand consultancy. We focus on helping mid- to large-sized organizations navigate the brand side of change. We just celebrated 22 years as an agency, which is exciting. And in that 22 years, we've had a great deal of successful projects. and mini lessons learned. So, those mini lessons learned are gonna fuel some of the discussion today, but I'm excited for this topic.
A couple housekeeping notes before we really dive in here. We're gonna have about 20 minutes of a discussion, and then I'm hoping to have 15 to 20 minutes of Q&A as well, so… Be sure to use the Q&A feature here on the webinar portal. You can click on that little Q&A button at the bottom, you can pop that question in at any point, but we'd love to have a good discussion here. You can also drop in comments in the chat, like, this is great, good point, Russ and Joe, you're so smart, you know, feel to throw out some verbal affirmation in the chat as we go. Or you can ask questions there, as well. So, be sure to do that.
Last, two more kind of housekeeping things. One is, we're gonna do a book giveaway. So, if, if you're not familiar, there's a book that I authored called Radically Relevant. It's beautiful, I'm a little biased, but, We're gonna give 3 copies away. So, in order to win it, though, you have to stay on the webinar to the end. So it's like a little carrot that we are dangling out there for you to tune in the entire time, but if you are on the call, you are automatically entered into it. So, stay tuned to the end. Patrice, who's on the call with us, helping kind of run things on the Zoom side, she will randomly choose 3 attendees, and we'll give those books away. So, stay tuned for that.
And then. Last announcement before we get started, we have another webinar November 12 And this is gonna be around leading change for a rebrand and building the case internally. So, very similar to today's topic, but a little bit, different in that we're gonna have a really specific scenario that we're walking through. Our Director of Brand Strategy, Tracy Clark, is gonna host a discussion with one of our clients, the Armstrong Company, around how they managed and navigated through a significant a really complex brand change. So. We'll drop a link into that as well, so you can, you can click on that and go ahead and register if you're interested.
Okay, so, I mentioned many lessons in our 22 years of doing what we do at Matchstic, and one of those is around internal alignment. Now, my background and expertise is really on the creative side, so as a creative agency, we love the challenge of strategically positioning a brand, thinking through the brand voice and the message, thinking through the visual identity. I love that, those bits and pieces of what it is that we do, but I have learned over time that that never happens, or it doesn't go well if you don't get executive buy-in for the case for change. Or if you don't think through the budget planning properly, or if you don't manage timeline, expectations, or even have strategic alignment across all of the decision makers in the organization, those creative exercises don't go well, and they're not quite as efficient and effective as they could be.
So today, we're kind of getting ahead of the creative and the strategy work to talk more about the planning side. So if you're thinking about a brand investment in 2026, this is going to be super beneficial for you. And I'm excited to have a conversation with Russ and Joe from the VIM group. This is a group that specializes in brand implementation and management, when their clients are going through brand change.
So, I first got connected to them About a year and a half ago, doing another webinar with a WebDAM system called Paperfly, and they were there to kind of help represent more of the cost analysis, and then even the IT implementation side of brand change. Which I thought was fascinating, because those are two really important pieces that, if those don't go well, you really don't maximize your investment on the creative piece there in the middle.
So, we have Russell Thompson joining us today, who started out in a business advisory role at Ernst & Young. And subsequently held roles at several, leading strategic brand agencies, and since then, he's kind of moved on from the creative side to the operational side at VIM Group. And he works closely with different brand stakeholders at international organizations, and groups like Matchstic at creative agencies to plan and implement brand change programs. So, really excited to have him. With us today to share more, more information about just the price around a rebrand and, all of the effort that goes into planning for that.
We also have Joanna Jenkins, on the call, so she has a background in brand consultancy, working at Creative Industries and business strategy as a part of, kind of, her, her, resume. She previously worked on global implementation programs for United Airlines and Star Alliance, and recently joined the leadership team at VIM. So, Joe, Russell, thanks so much for being with us today.
Russell Thompson:
Thank you, and thank you, thank you very, very much for, for having us, and for those, for those lovely introductions.
Joanna Jenkins:
I think you've obviously already just touched on this, but, you know, we work with clients all around the world who. Some of them, you know, have had wonderful experiences, and some of them have had not-so-great experiences whilst dealing with the complexities that come when you're going through a monumental brand change, or even sometimes when it's not so monumental, but it's still quite tricky because of certain circumstances. And we do hear from clients who've been doing this for years and years, who… I think it's granted all would say that they do things very differently today if they knew, you know, back then what they know now.
So, so I think it's an interesting conundrum, and actually. I was in a workshop recently with a… with a client of ours who is currently going through a big global implementation program. And he's also re-landscaping his garden at the same time, and he was showing me these beautiful pictures of his utopian vision that he has for his garden, which hasn't happened yet. But he said for him, actually, the learning from working with us previously in another role was actually costing his garden up from the start, otherwise he realised that his garden's never ever going to come to fruition and would never see the light of day. So he was like, well, it's a bit like this program we're going through with you, isn't it? Because if we don't actually know what's going on, then the reality stakes are that, you know, we don't get the board internal engagement, and we don't get them to sign off on everything that we want to do from a You know, price perspective.
And then the whole thing becomes a bit of a pipe dream, and this brand change is just gonna get halted and nothing's gonna happen. So, I think there's the cost element there, and then on top of that are all the complexities that come with it, especially when we know from clients that we work with, when they're going through M&A activities. you know, those complexities just become even more intense, and so understanding what the pitfalls are is really crucial to them to have successful outcomes with what it is that they're doing. So, yeah, it's, it's a… it's a bit of a minefield sometimes, but I think, you know, when… when we work with people, at least that we can kind of help give them assurances and… and help pave the right way for them.
Blake Howard:
Yeah.
Well, I want to start with a real specific question, and this statistic caught my eye when I was first introduced to VIM Group, because this happens a lot with our clients, where you don't really know how much to budget for in terms of rollout, implementation, change. Every organization's different, the amount of change is different, you know, it's not a one-size-fits-all sort of scenario, but You all said for every $1 invested in strategy and design, you need $20 for implementation, which was a stunning statistic and ratio. Tell us more about that. How did you land on that specific number?
Russell Thompson:
Cool. Shall I take… I'll say that, Joe, yeah.
Joanna Jenkins:
I think you should go for it.
Russell Thompson:
Yeah, so, I think first thing to say, it's a generalization, so 1 in 20 doesn't mean it's the case for everyone, but yeah, like YouTube, like, obviously, as you mentioned, I used to work on the more creative side. And so often, we're putting in these proposals for all the wonderful strategy and design work we're gonna do. And then we tag on, you know, like, a brand activation or brand implementation, or even put them together. Half-day workshop at the end, and you know, hope that a project manager will deal with that in 9 months' time. So actually, when I got into VAM 5 years ago, it really opened my eyes in terms of what an oversight and an afterthought, an underestimate… underestimate… underestimation, implementation is. So, where's that 1 in 20 come from? I mean, we've run it by 2,500 brand change programs over, well, more years than I've been here. And obviously we've collected the data on that. two ways we've approached that we help organizations, I think Joe alluded to this in the upfront, so actually planning their budgets at the beginning, so we have all the data on that. And then some of those organizations, we were lucky enough, to get asked to help them with the actual implementation as well, so we can actually then refine that data and fill out how close were we in the first place.
So we've got all that data in the database. And quite often, we're asked by organizations to give them, like, a finger in the air. to what a rebrand might cost them beyond all their creative costs. We obviously warn them with caution, but sometimes they need a number, and they don't want to invest you know, weeks and weeks of going into the organization and looking at every touchpoint, understanding where brand could change, or maybe name changes as well, so it's not even just where is brand, where is the name, documents, legal documents, things like that, and understanding what they might be getting into, to almost give themselves permission to start. It's not 1 in 20 in every sector, things like professional services. There might be some people in that sector listening right now, but, tends to be a little bit shorter than that, so it's sort of like a 1 to 5, 1 to 8, depending on your sector. And other organizations where they've got lots of big-ticket touchpoints, physical stuff, retail, industrial. I won't tell you what it is, it's a lot more than 1 in 20.
So I guess, I guess the point in having that there is to give them a flavor. Big caveat is, every organization's different, and our recommendation would be, at some point early on in the journey, to go in there and actually get under the hood and see how your organization operates. And what that really means for you, and that's where you're going to start to understand the efficiencies and the nuance. It's certainly not meant to scare people off, but I think it helps to elevate the importance of Getting implementation on the agenda early on, alongside, obviously, the likes of you guys, and coming up with those great ideas.
Blake Howard:
Right, yeah.
Joanna Jenkins:
Well, I think also with that, very quickly, is that it is, and as Russell said, it's not the sort of scaring everybody tactic, it's the starting point to manage expectations, because that is key to all of this. You know, if you've got your C-suite. On board, they understand what's coming. then… then that's the kind of… that's the starting point. So this is… this is… this is how to get that, you know, those expectations, sort of. Planted in people's minds, so that they know what's coming.
Blake Howard:
Yeah, that's good. And one of the variables in some of that cost analysis is understanding the ambitions of change for that organization. And there's, you know, for the duration of this webinar, we're not going to share a lot of slides, but we do have one slide, and I want to pull it up and get your Thoughts on it and, and explain it a little bit for everyone. Let's see… around the impact of an ambitious brand change and how that can signal certain aspects of planning and a cost perspective. So maybe talk to us a little bit more about this slide.
Joanna Jenkins:
Yeah, I think the thing here with this, this is our, this is our model that we use to sort of help frame and answer… answer the question around the ambition of change, which… Obviously, from… a light refresh, you know, if you're updating your logo, or your tone of voice, or your visual system might be evolutionary, but then, of course, the rollout can be gradual in that situation, but then you can also talk about doing a full rebrand, where you've got a whole name change, and Ambition multiplies that complexity. coupled with, obviously, M&A spin-offs, which can mean another whole… raft of complexity on top of that. So, Russell, over to you to sort of… Walk everyone through that.
Russell Thompson:
Yeah, like, I mean, I think… obviously, there's a lot of it's aligning, you know, as you would do, Blake, in terms of, you know. how big a change is this? Are we refreshing the brand? Are we going big and changing everything? But the other real mechanic about this, well, one of the key ones, is really leadership and what their ambition is, because ultimately. I want it now. or I'm not paying for it, are things that are going to drive that. I mean, I think a good example, some people on the call may have, may have heard me speaking about this before, I know a few of you.
We worked with, Sanofi, big, pharma brand, when they rebranded. Four years ago? What, three and a half years ago? And we got brought in alongside the agency that was working on their visual identity. Sorry, I wasn't Matchstic on this occasion. And basically said, right, we want to launch… the CEO says we want to launch the brand in January, and that's what leadership's on board with. luckily, we had done that groundwork, and as Joe said, this is a starting point, but we had actually gone through a full, you know, couple of months process, looking at everything they had, and how it fitted in, and how it entered dependencies with all the other work streams they had going on. And we were able to say to them, look, realistically, to have the kind of big bang you want, it's going to be April. That actually wasn't when it launched, it was somewhere in between, I think it was the beginning of February, but it empowered the brand team to go to leadership and say, right, we can compromise, but we've got the facts and the understanding about what those trade-offs are. you can make a decision based on… based on reality. So I think… I think that's a really, yeah, good example of where this came in and useful. Blake, I assume you've got some… Some views on this, too, with some clients that you've worked with.
Blake Howard:
Oh yeah, yes, I think that, Yeah, if there's a brand or a scenario that's more complex, like we worked with an organization that was 5 cloud-based technology brands that were all coming together, consultancies, they're all coming together to form one global brand, obviously that ambition is higher, that complexity is higher, and… You really can't have old brand and new brand coexist, and that's where you have more of an investment, you have more of a tightly wound launch strategy that's really important for the success of that… the launch of that new brand.
However, we've worked with other groups, one of which comes to mind is the largest, trampoline park in the world. And they wanted to evolve their brand, not just completely revolutionize it. And so, as they update facilities. they're able to roll out that… the new logo and some of the new visual identity they have, because they can coexist. That's the general rule of thumb that I think about, is if the brands can coexist, you can have a longer tail on change, you can kind of, you know, update materials as needed over time. However, if it's a complex change, and it's a revolutionary change, if it can cause confusion for the two… the old brand and the new brand to coexist, then you should think about something that's It's quicker in terms of timeline for replenishing all the branded assets that are out in the market.
Russell Thompson:
Great. Makes a lot of sense.
Blake Howard:
Yeah. What are some other, maybe common pitfalls that you all have seen As it relates to complex rebrands, maybe up and to the right of that chart, especially within this kind of topic of planning and budgeting, what are some things that can often go wrong?
Russell Thompson:
Yeah, I mean… I've had quite a busy day, we're obviously a few hours ahead of you. I had quite a busy day already, and one of our clients, we worked with them years ago, and they just invited us in, and the main reason is to help them out, because they have massively underestimated the scope of what's involved, and obviously it's getting closer to a launch date, and they've got some problems there. So, I mean, I think a… A good example would be, I mean, I mentioned professional services, as another sector where often they don't want to spend as much, so we worked with quite a well-known, accountancy firm that's global, not one that I work for, just to be clear. And, yeah, they picked out, I think it was 15 key office locations that they really wanted to make sure that all the signage on the front was, was ready to go for day one. I believe on one of their sites, they also had, like, embossed marble with the logo on it, which was obviously a bit of an undertaking as well. So they went to all the effort to, To get that sorted out. And then we looked at their plans and said, well, look. You aren't gonna refresh the branding in the bathrooms, in your offices. And actually, we've done a few site audits. And the condition of the actual facilities isn't great either. So, I mean, ultimately, that was a bit of a watch out for them, because it's gonna undermine all the… all the big-ticket stuff they've done as well, so you've got to kind of be mindful of the small things as well.
Joanna Jenkins:
I think there's two… the other part of that is, you know, underestimating that scope means that you land up with burnout with your people. So, you know, if you can get it right, then you don't land up with burning people out and overspend, because ultimately that's what lands up happening. Which can obviously become quite costly. So… I think the flip to that, too, is that there's an opportunity here to look at your, you know, look at the customer experience, and look at the employee experience at the same time, because you're sort of, in terms of that scope, where… what should be changing, and where should the things be changing first, and understanding priorities, you know, what are the priorities, and what should come first, and what should come second, and… So you're… you're also planning the whole thing out better. Which in turn helps with that understand… understanding the scope side of things. So, I mean, for example, we… We were introduced to a big global sports brand, Recently, who had serious burnout. I mean, like, all of their people, they seriously underestimated the budget. They'd underestimated what it was going to take from their people, and they were broken. So, obviously those things can be overcome, but they get overcome by then putting in more people, more budget, to then fix it, which costs more in the long… in the longer term. So it's just, it's, you know, those are the pitfalls here, which kind of just ensures that, you know, you can work out the sweet spot of what to do and when, rather than kind of going too narrow and not having enough people or enough money, or too sprawling and trying to do everything at once. So it's just, you know, it's obviously all in the planning there, too, to make sure that you can kind of, you know, be on the front foot.
Blake Howard:
Yeah. Well, a lot of times what we will see is, maybe more on the timeline side, where clients haven't really thought through the amount of time it takes to develop a website, as an example. websites are often sort of the trigger to the market of announcing some sort of a rebrand or refresh, and if you go through a significant refresh, you know, you really don't want the website to not be a touchpoint where it's reflected. So… and then sometimes you're thinking, well, I don't want to just reskin the website, I don't want to do a full overhaul, so… Now that's, you know, 6 to 8 months of time, and a lot of money, that if you haven't planned ahead, it can really be problematic in terms of just maximizing momentum, because momentum's big in these types of projects.
Joanna Jenkins:
Absolutely, yeah.
Blake Howard:
I want to jump to the fifth question that we kind of had planned.
Blake Howard:
Because I think it maybe transitions from that comment pretty seamlessly around, like, what's the right time to start planning the implementation side? And then, who in the organization usually owns that?
Russell Thompson:
Well, the cop-out is… it depends, obviously. And you're right, I mean, who owns that conversation or decision sort of drives it a little bit. Yeah, I mean…
Joanna Jenkins:
I think key is sponsorship, isn't it? So in terms of that planning piece, the kind of getting… Ensuring that you've got the right sponsors in play to drive this thing and to get behind it. that just changes everything. I mean, like, so when we were, in fact, I saw our, old colleague and client, Chris Williams, a couple of days ago, who, was running the whole Sanofi brand change that we did, and he said, actually, their new CEO that had come in was just a huge advocate of, you know, of brand change. He really wanted to get wholly involved. He understood the implications of everything, but he also listened to his, obviously, his experienced team. to… for them to… to run the brand change, but he was really, really behind it. And Chris said, without that, it would have been a very, very different, scenario, because they were also running at ridiculous pace, weren't they, Russell? Because you worked on that.
Russell Thompson:
Yeah, yeah, I mean, that… so that one…
Joanna Jenkins:
So the plan… so the planning then really key.
Russell Thompson:
Yeah, I mean, I think that one was a good example of where they were running creative. I think they had come up with a brand purpose already, and then somebody said. How much is this gonna cost, and when can we launch? So they were running the creative work stream. In parallel, you know, to us doing… doing, essentially, the assessment, the impact analysis, and putting a plan together, and setting up… with them, a PMO, all the work streams, so by work streams, we're talking about the functions within the business, so whether that's HR, Blake, you obviously mentioned, you know, digital, IT, that's a real nutty one, because a lot of organizations outsource some of their IT, so that puts a spanner and potentially a big cost in the works if you're going to change something, because you know, everybody's having to change that. In fact, we had a, we have a client at the moment. they may be on the call, I don't know. But essentially, they're… they're working on their brand strategy at the moment. We got told that we would start the implementation workstream, in January. they're planning to launch at some point next year, we don't know when yet, that keeps changing. I would say try and give yourself 6 to 9 months, if it's a really complex one. And then we got contacted separately by, essentially a, IT and digital agency about their brand tech platform and their brand portal. And the license for that's up for renewal, but the brand team didn't know about that, so obviously we were able to go back to them and say.
Look, we really need to start looking into at least these nutty touchpoint areas now, because other parts of your business that you're not talking to are planning changes that are going to cost a lot of money. and possibly limit, what you're able to do then as a result, from a brand perspective. So I think… Yeah, I mean, the answer is that… by the way, my lights have just gone out, I apologize. Do you want to go?
Joanna Jenkins:
I'll turn them back on again.
Russell Thompson:
Shall I go and turn it on? You can… you can finish that question off. Thanks, Joe.
Joanna Jenkins:
Exactly. I just think, you know, with everything, yeah, I mean, like Russell says, it's all of the interdependencies as well, and recognizing where those all fall across a business, and, and just chucking into that That as well, the fact that quite… quite often, with… if you do the planning up front, and you're talking to all your business unit owners, actually, the brand team don't have to land up paying for the entire thing, because you're recognizing where there are… Natural replacement cycles, or natural things happening within the business in those teams anyway. So, they land up paying for the brand rollout, rather than brand. So, rather than brand sitting there going, oh my god, we've got to come up with, like, this huge amount of money, it can be borne out across the entire organization.
Russell Thompson:
Yeah, and that's… that's… and that's… that's a good point. I mean, we worked with, an energy company, actually, in the States, last year. And they were, they were a spin-off.
So…there were a lot of other levers at play that were really nothing to do with brands. You know, they legally had to disassociate from their former company and come up with the, you know, the new brand. So in a way. legal, you know, or regulatory, was almost sort of dictating the timeline for them. But actually, they came up with a pretty nice way around that. They registered the company as a different legal entity name that had nothing to do with the brand, because they didn't even know what the brand was going to be yet. and bought themselves the flexibility, and even were able to look at different business units and decide whether they're going to license brands from the former company or purchase those differently. So again. it comes back to… the earlier you get a sense of what's going on and what depends on what, as Joe says. The cheaper it is, and the more flexibility you have.
Blake Howard:
Yeah.
I want to jump into one more question, then we can open it up to Q&A. Maybe we can get some specific questions that would be good to dialogue around. But, given all of this, and knowing that the success of a rebrand or refresh effort is driven by the upfront planning and really just understanding it. how do you define what those drivers of planning might be? Like, are there certain categories that you would frame up in terms of, hey, make sure you're planning for these areas, in order to be really good drivers of success?
Russell Thompson:
Yeah, I mean… maybe it's a bit simplistic, but, you know, almost going back to the, the one slide that we showed earlier on, I mean, I… It's time. money, and I think you said it in the intro, Blake, alignment, and without the first two of those things, if you don't have clarity on those. everything else becomes reactive, and, you know, reactive doesn't really, for me at least, equal alignment equals panic, you know? Yeah.
Blake Howard:
Yeah, that's good. What about you, Joe?
Joanna Jenkins:
I think, what… Collaboration, definitely. So collaborating, and I don't mean just with the internal teams, client side. What's worked really, really well for us, and continues to do so, is when us and the agencies the client's working with, and the brand teams, and internal stakeholders, and everybody, as long as everyone's in sync, and you're all going on the same trajectory, that's where you've got a win-win. Because everyone knows what everyone's doing, there's a lot of, you know, there's been kind of careful… it's like an orchestra, isn't it? You kind of bring in the right parts at the right times. you bring sometimes people in together for a certain reason. I mean, also, some of our clients really love setting up war rooms with us. Like, again, you know, I know I've referenced them before, but we did that with Sanofi, where cross… those cross-functional teams can then come together and make decisions really quickly. So, especially if a business is going through that really pacey you know, hitting the ground running and going hell for leather. I mean, I think you guys work in a similar way, don't you, or have done with some of your clients?
Blake Howard:
Yeah, we worked with the Boys and Girls Clubs of America years ago on kind of a strategic repositioning and message… messaging project, and they would bring in, monthly, their digital agency, their donor team, and several other groups within the organization. Just to give updates, there were several projects happening at once. There were research projects, and so, digital projects, so we would all come together in a big summit, and we would just give updates on our work, and I thought that was a really easy way to keep different groups connected as there were so many moving pieces and parts.
Joanna Jenkins:
Yep.
No, I completely agree, because things can get identified, too. You can, you know, very quickly identify where there's a problem, or whether someone's doubling up on anything, and then you can just… Get rid of those things.
Blake Howard:
Yeah.
Well, let's jump to some questions. I see one in here from Britt. Hello, Britt. Can you give us some more examples of the brand team not having to pay for everything? What teams have paid for other elements, other things?
Russell Thompson:
Yes.
Joanna Jenkins:
Yeah, good question.
Russell Thompson:
So, I mean, I think… well, there's lots of examples. I mean… We had a… we had a client, Jill, didn't we? Kind of… business services, I guess they were? Multi-billion, actually. Like, quite a… traditional organization that… You might even say is a little bit… averse to change, but they actually brought in new leadership, a CEO from an organization that had been through brand change, so I guess that's a little, booster in that respect. And we got approached by the chief comms officer there, and had multiple conversations With them, and they had a direct line to the CEO, and actually they brought in the CFO, which I think was the key thing as well. And we did some initial costing, but based on some modeling. We have some AI as well plugged into the database that we talked about at the beginning, so even without going into their organization, we were able to give them some comparable to other organizations of their size and sector. And actually, the Chief Comms Officer took a budget to the CEO and the CFO, and originally, I think they had said, was it 15,000… pounds, or euro, whatever it was, Joe.
Joanna Jenkins:
No, yeah.
Russell Thompson:
Budget that they anticipated spending on this for, like, an agency to do a logo, maybe? They took a multi-million, budget to them. And we mapped out, how that would fit into the different functions and spread it over several years, so… they weren't going for big change, but… but ultimately, they were still then able to fit that in to work streams that were going on, so website, as an example there, if you're redesigning your website, I mean, we had one with… ING Bank in the Netherlands, and they wanted to look at their bank cards, and they had, I think, 100 suppliers. We brought it down to 9, and… or 7, in fact, and they had 9… they had 9 design agencies working with them, brought that down to 4, And as part of their rebrand, we actually basically got, you know, the card part of the business to pay for that. because they had the incentive… not rebound was 10 years ago, I think. For the next decade, they've been saving a whole bunch of money. All the bank cards and the credit cards that they've been having to issue. You know, in terms of the, you know, the materialization, the design, all of that. So I guess.
Joanna Jenkins:
I guess… I guess… I guess the other thing too there, Russell, is when… when we're… the reason for, sort of, like, doing… when we do the upfront, sort of, costing part, and help people with the investment case, we're talking to business unit owners across the… across the business, and the work stream owners, so actually engaging with those people. from the start, and understanding their pain points and all of that means that they're being listened to actively from the start, so… Yeah. because they're already on that journey, they are more, I guess, more…
Russell Thompson:
allergies.
Joanna Jenkins:
the idea, and understand the value that can be bought.
Russell Thompson:
How are you?
Joanna Jenkins:
You know, yeah.
Russell Thompson:
Yeah, I mean, we… I remember it was, I suppose they do, kind of, industrial generators and things like that. They'd had a long-standing issue with… The packaging for one of their key products, like, it just… It was through the roof in terms of the cost, it wasn't efficient. And as part of that, when we engaged with the product team. And put it to them that through the rebrand, you know, they'd be getting a new process and a new design for that. That actually helped to bring them on board in terms of, we're going to absorb some of the cost of this, and not seeing it as a rebrand cost. But as a business benefit cost for their function within the business. Because I suppose when we're talking about rebrand. costs. We're talking about incremental spend, rather than the total cost, so what would you be spending? That could be put towards brand. And I think to Britt's original question, within reason, I don't think $15,000 is quite reason, but within reason. If you have a starting point for what that brand budget is. you can do quite a lot with that.
Again, professional service is an interesting example, because we know they're quite decentralized and might have a small brand budget. That can also be detrimental at the same time. I mean, if you've got different countries, for example, with different legal entities, and they're having to pay for it themselves. You've really got to work on your internal engagement and your governance to get them to do it. Otherwise, they may not.
Blake Howard:
I want to get to a question that Stacy asked, I think this is a really good question. Any tips for getting leadership on board when they feel like the brand is already pretty good? When it's definitely not. She said she had someone tell them their brand was excellent when they didn't have a visual or verbal brand style guide that used 20 different fonts across their website. And so, building the case for change, I think, is kind of the key question there. And my quick take, and I'd love to get your thoughts as well, is…
You've first gotta have some sort of objective metric to associate with it, because otherwise, it's just an exercise in decorating living rooms. You know, if it's just a discussion about what are the best throw pillows to put on the couch, you're not gonna win that. But, if it can be more objective about the business or what the audience says… So, you know, I've had leaders say similar things, and it's like, well, that's… I'm so glad that you like it, that you think it's effective. Let's test it, and let's see. Let's see what your audience thinks about it. Maybe it is, maybe… Maybe it's not. And then you can kind of turn the tables on that type of a statement.
Russell Thompson:
Yeah, like, I mean… I think the kind of… the benefit of rebranding or brand change question, bit of a cop-out, but we all know there's… well, I think everyone on this call probably understands the benefit, but that's… that's the challenge within organizations. I'm imagining your next webinar is going to be a good learning for that as well. I think for us, because we're really in… if we're looking in kind of the business case for doing it. We're more about… If you are going to change, here are the benefits of changing, and that can be from a… brand management perspective, coherence. I mean, the ING example, you know, I gave you there as well, that's… that's really looking at, right, well, we can make Brand as a function. you know, support our business needs in a much more efficient way globally for the long term. Those kind of metrics, yeah, decision makers do listen to. And ultimately, you get to a point where when they do know that change is needed. They want to know that they're doing it in the most cost-effective way, and I think putting the implementation plan in place certainly helps with that.
Joanna Jenkins:
I think also with the cost efficiencies side of things, because that's, you know, where people often say to us, well, you know, what is the ROI of kind of involving you guys in working with us? What's the measure, kind of thing. Yeah. And, and it is… you know, it is understanding and recognizing, like Russell was talking about, you know, the… bank cards, you know, quite often people go, well, yeah, people will… people will carry on working with us anyway. Yeah, okay, but you can make your business work harder for you, you know? I mean, we have this conversation a lot between all of us here, but, you know, your business is your brand, your brand is your business. If you kind of… if you don't want to spend money on your brand, then you're just equally saying you're not going to spend any money on your business, you know?
It’s, I don't know, they're one and the same thing. People are buying, it's reputation, it's… your business is your reputation, your brand is your reputation, they're one and the same.
Blake Howard:
Alright, one more question here from Tracy. What… what is the most overlooked part of the rebrand process from your perspectives
Russell Thompson:
From… from the process… Because I would say from the part of the business, I guess we alluded to it, is probably IT. From the process, Hmm. I would say probably the… the setup, and by setup, I mean… kind of setting up… let's say you have a… we would advise, usually, if it's a large-scale rebrand, to have a PMO, a central PMO. And various work streams as well. And then you're gonna have various reporting groups, you know, whether that's a steering group, who needs to be in that, what the racy looks like. And I think that… that quite often is a step that's overlooked because organizations are so keen to get going.
So even if you've gone there and done a bit of an audit, and a lot of organizations, you know, have the capacity to do that, at least to some level themselves internally. people then start getting into the excitement of the doing, and if you haven't gone through that and set up what that looks like, you're probably setting yourself up for an inefficient process. And I think a big example of that is having lots of senior people In meetings that they probably don't need to be in, and because they're in them, they then feel like they have a say in what's happening, and that can be really tricky to navigate.
Joanna Jenkins:
And need to have a voice, whereas actually they probably don't. They should just let teams get on and make stuff happen.
Blake Howard:
Well, I think, I think we should do the book giveaway now, Patrice, so if you can hop on, let us know who… who's gonna get the book, we'll… we'll send that out to you, and then I have a quick recap for us.
Blake Howard:
Yeah, thanks, Patrice. Yeah, I think just a couple notes I put, you know, don't under budget or overspend. Find that Goldilocks, like, just right in the middle in terms of planning. And that's all driven by your ambition for change and the priorities you have as a business. And then the role of executive sponsorship is paramount. And then thinking through the time, money, alignment, and collaboration as kind of, like, four key drivers for success as you start to plan that out. So for every organization, what's the right time that's needed? What's the right money to support the change? What's the right alignment plan and socialization strategy? And then lastly, what are the interdependencies with the collaboration piece that you need? Those are the notes that I took. Russ, Joe, thank you so much.
Joanna Jenkins:
Great summary, thank you.
Blake Howard:
Thanks, everyone, for tuning in, and yeah, appreciate it, and we'll talk to everyone soon.
Joanna Jenkins:
Thank you very much.
Russell Thompson:
Thank you, guys.
Joanna Jenkins:
Bye!
Blake Howard:
Bye.
Thank you so much for joining. We hope you enjoyed it. We appreciate your time and we'll hope to see you soon.
