Going through a brand change is pretty common these days. When I say common, I don’t mean corporations changed their brands every six months. Common events trigger brand changes, including mergers, acquisitions and competitive issues. As much as you may dread the work involved in a brand change, there’s no way to avoid it when the time comes. Whether it’s a new name, new logo or other visual elements, it’s still a brand change.
Brand change expertise is rarely found within corporate marketing and branding departments because employees don’t handle brand changes on a daily basis. That’s why companies outsource the project management of a brand change – removing and replacing signs on buildings, offices and retail stores, vehicle graphics on corporate and fleet vehicles, etc. – to experts like Implementix. As a result, we encounter all kinds of responses, reactions, and approaches to brand change. We often find a segment of employees and other stakeholders resistant to change or just plain holding onto the old brand. Remember Hem and Haw in the book, Who Moved My Cheese?
As an example, we recently worked on a brand change prompted by an acquisition. An employee managing vehicles in the company being acquired took great pride in the way “his” high-profile vehicles looked and wasn’t crazy about the design or quality level of the upcoming brand change. To send a message to the new owners, he insisted on a higher quality level for his vehicles. Achieving a higher quality result meant the work needed to be performed in a cleaner, better-lit facility than the onsite location chosen by the new owner.
We often find ourselves playing the role of mediator/problem-solver during a brand change. This keeps employees and other stakeholders from internal power plays and dealing with conflict directly. In this case, we found a solution that met the vehicle manager’s quality requirements at a corporate facility in a nearby city.
Here are 5 tips for dealing with resistance to a brand change:
- Set expectations: We make it clear that resistance is part of the brand change process and must be proactively dealt with to avoid escalation.
- Early identification: Gather information and identify resisters early in the process.
- Involvement and Buy-in: Involve stakeholders in the planning process, especially resisters.
- Stay open-minded: Ask questions and listen carefully to resisters. They might be alerting you to real problems rather than simply being resistant to change.
- Negotiate: Be open to offering tradeoffs rather than steamrolling over resisters struggling with the change. You’ll be lowering stress levels and creating goodwill.
There will always be people resistant to change. Cheese, brand…it doesn’t matter. Recognizing and understanding the Hems and Haws at your company will make your brand change run smoother.
