No two rebranding projects are the same. We’ve worked on everything from high-profile nationwide rebranding projects to small regional projects. With all of the holiday movies on TV right now, I decided to put together my own Naughty & Nice lists. I won’t list the company names (that wouldn’t be nice), but I will describe the situations so that you can replicate the Nice projects and avoid the Naughty antics.
Let’s start with our top three Nice stories.
- Reducing Waste Saves Money. I’m a big fan of eliminating waste and saving money. One client brought us in early in the rebranding process for a large fleet of vehicles. The client was rebranding all its specialty trailers with the new brand identity, so we started with an Assessment to gather data on the vehicles involved. During the Assessment, we discovered that 50% of the specialty trailers had to remain unmarked due to contract requirements with the client’s customers. Right off the bat, the client saved $100,000 in rebranding costs because it didn’t order unnecessary vehicle graphic kits from the printer.
- Encouraging Employee Feedback. Strong internal communications keep employees in the loop, positively impacting a company’s bottom line and morale. We’ve learned that standardized fleet vehicle policies set at corporate headquarters aren’t always practical in the field. For instance, national fleet managers may tell us that 100% of all fleet vehicles are in use from early morning to late afternoon, so rebranding efforts need to be scheduled after drivers return to the office at 4:30 p.m. This isn’t always the case. In working directly with field managers for one client, we learned that a lot of vehicles returned before 4:30 p.m., allowing us to start rebranding efforts earlier in the day. We were able to complete the fleet rebranding ahead of schedule and with minimal interruptions to daily operations.
- Simplifying the Process for Franchisees. For consumers, franchisee-owned and corporate-owned properties are the same brand, same company. That’s why one of our clients, a large hotel franchisor, was rebranding all hotel vehicles with a new brand identity. While the franchisor originally believed the fleet included shuttle buses and vans, our Assessment uncovered that hotels had minivans, passenger vans, raised roof conversion vans, small shuttle buses, and large shuttle buses. In fact, most of the vehicles (other than minivans and passenger vans), were custom-made vehicles of different sizes, window and door configurations built by small van conversion companies or custom bus manufacturers. We engineered four basic graphic kits that fit all of the custom vehicles and automated the process, making ordering brand-compliant rebranding kits easy for franchisees.
These Nice companies used rebranding best practices, setting themselves up for a happy new year. Now I need to do some last minute shopping, so the Naughty list will have to wait.
