Melanie
Welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast for all decision makers and action takers. Take it away, Esther.
Esther
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today, we're joined by Vardeep Edwards, founder of The Branding Fox, a Brand and Design Development Studio. And we're going to be talking about how and why you should rebrand. Welcome, Vardeep.
Vardeep
Oh, thanks for having me.
Esther
You're very welcome. So, Vardeep, tell us a bit more about yourself before we get started.
Vardeep
So, yeah. So I'm a branding specialist. My background is in graphic design, so I've had a bit of a journey in terms of where I've got to today. I've done graphic design for many, many years. And Quite a few years ago, I did a social media course. Part of that reason was that I wanted to stop commuting into town when I had children, and I wanted to find a way of networking and marketing myself online. I fell into doing social media for some clients. But one of the things I noticed was that a lot of them were looking and sounding quite similar to one another and other competitors in their space. When I started digging as to why that was and what needed to change, led me down this road of branding. Then coupled with doing graphic design and moving more towards logos and now broader visual and brand identities, I've now realized that actually branding the process needs to start before you start designing any logos, which is something I wasn't taught in university. And now that helps to inform a better outcome for my clients, helps to differentiate them, helps them stand out better on social media. So, yeah, in a nutshell, that's me.
Esther
Great. And okay, so you touched on there that branding starts before you design a logo and all of that. So talk us through the process of I don't know, do we start with color psychology? Do we start with, is there a color scheme for different industries? Because you said there's a lot of things in what you said that really It started out that everybody looked the same and everybody had the same logo or branding. So what is it or where is it that people need to start in order to stand out?
Vardeep
So I start with what the business is about, because essentially what you want to find out is what's unique and different about that particular business. That takes a little bit of digging and time. For example, I had a client a couple of years ago, and they thought their way of standing out and looking different was to go down this route of looking quite exuberant and quite outgoing and be quite high energy because they some other people in their space looking at that, and it seemed to work for them. But once we started looking at their brand story, what they were about, what they wanted to achieve, why they wanted to target those particular people, and why that was important to them, it took a different route and a different journey. I think you don't always know necessarily what that outcome is going to look like in terms of the visuals until you do some of that pre-work.
Melanie
Now, finally, I get a chance to talk. There are so many people who do the same job that seek the same audience. I know It's the person who's running the brand that's the important thing. But there's only so many ways that you can make that one person look different in the same space. How do you differentiate and make them stand out?
Vardeep
This comes to what the brand is. It's much more than the logo and the fonts and the colors. It's your story, it's your messaging, it's the way you present yourself, it's your customer experience, and it's the feeling, essentially that you evoke in other people. I was saying this last night to my son, actually. It's like the difference between Nike and Adidas. If the logos often, it's just a black T-shirt, would you know any different? But once the logos are on, he's like, Which one would you choose? And he's like, well, I'm going to go for the Nike because he aligns with their values, he aligns with their beliefs and what they're about. I think it takes time to get to that stage, but they now stand out, even though essentially, they're probably targeting very similar audiences as a lot of other sports brands like Puma, Adidas, and what have you. I think what they are doing to stand out is they're tapping into a different emotional connection than the other sportswear brands. So regardless of what they say and do, it's Nike. It's always Nike. They've really built that strong connection, and that's quite tough to break.
Esther
Yeah, in my kids' cases, one is Nike because they make the shirts of his favorite football team, and the other one is Adidas for the exact same reason. So that's how deep their loyalty goes.
Melanie
Sounds like an expensive Christmas.
Vardeep
Yeah.
Esther
Very, very.
But, okay, so we're talking... That's the general's about branding. When do we know if it's time to rebrand?
Vardeep
Okay, so this is a little bit of a trickier one because in terms of rebranding, it's a journey. So you don't always know straight away that you possibly need to rebrand. Some of the more common. Yeah.
Esther
No, no. Keep going.
Vardeep
Sorry. One of the more common examples might be that the audience has shifted. So, again, a recent client, they've working towards working with a slightly different client base for maybe a couple of years, and that was working really well for them. But the the outer perception of their brand, the visual identity bit, wasn't really targeting that in terms of who they were targeting and how they wanted to now be perceived. Therefore, it took them probably a couple of years to realize that they needed a rebrand. It It can take time, but that's one of the most common ones is that the audience has shifted. But it could also be that a new business owner is coming. Sometimes that happens quite a lot with slightly larger companies. It's shifting that, or it might be that they need to shift into a different market within their competitor landscape. It's sometimes to just stay relevant and evolved.
If you think about some of the the older brands that have been around for over 100 years, whether it's coat, shell, boots, for example, they will have had to shift in that 100 years to be able to stay relevant today. There's no way that their brand, in terms of their messaging, I suppose, and the outer bit. I just think the core values don't change a huge amount. If their messaging and marketing hadn't changed for 100 years, they would, I imagine, they'd probably be out of business. Hopefully, that answers. I feel like I've gone off a little bit.
Melanie
Yeah, definitely. Now, there is a subtle difference between tweak branding and rebranding, isn't there? Because there's an element of psychology that you're obviously involved in here, do you feel that even the early startups need to do a little bit of tweak branding every now and then? Does it reduce complacency? People think they've seen that ad before, or that blog post before, or that service before. Does it need to be tweaked?
Vardeep
Yeah, absolutely. Because I think, one, you've got your own take on the business. Even if there are lots of other businesses like yourself, you will have your unique way of doing things, point of view, process, outcome. It's always going to be slightly different. But absolutely, your brand needs to evolve with your business and needs to be entwined because that's the way you stay up to date and stay relevant as well to your customer base. Customers needs change as well over time. You get new tech, so you've got to be able to evolve and tweak in that. Your branding has got to work on various different platforms. Before digital, it was all print and Now since digital, it's got to be in the online space, but now it's even smaller and it's got to work in a tiny little profile shop. Or maybe it's just a couple of keywords in terms of your social posts. There's lots of smaller, smaller little interactions, and perhaps there were maybe even just 50 years ago. Absolutely, I think brands need to be forever tweaked, refined, evolved. But in terms of rebranding, I think that's a bigger shift because there's more elements or parts to it that need to be worked on.
Melanie
One would have a soft launch and one would have a hard launch, I assume.
Vardeep
Yeah, soft launch and hard launch. In terms of tweaking, I think that's something that can be done all the time. So I don't know if that negates a launch in any description, but you can do soft launches to perhaps test or dip your water in it before a big overhaul, hard launch.
Melanie
Got you.
Esther
Okay, so we talked a bit there about some of the big companies that hundreds of years old have rebranded. And one that comes to my mind is BP, British Petroleum, who, in an effort to look more green, changed their logo to greens and golds. And so does that affect people's perception of a company that, if you If you've got a green logo, then you're very environmentally friendly. If you've got a black logo, then you're... What is it to say? That was more sophisticated or more serious. Blue, like all the estate agents agents around me, real estate agents for the American listeners, are all blue. Is that a trust thing with the blue? Why? Yeah, Melanie's logo is blue. So we can trust her, right? Because her logo is blue.
Vardeep
Do you know what? I think blue is one of the most popular logo colors in the world. I think it does have a bit of a... Yeah, it's a trust, it's a corporate, it's a professional of stance to it. But we're attributing values and associations onto that logo. So on the logo itself, for a brand new business that nobody knows anything about, may not have that same effect as someone like BP, for example. That's something to take into consideration. The interesting thing with BP, and I can't... I think has their logo always been green? I'm trying to remember now.
Esther
I think I think it was blue before, was it not?
Vardeep
Was it blue? I'd have to double-check. The interesting thing with BP and choosing green to be able to look green, I think there's been a lot more conversation around authenticity and greenwashing of late of these types of companies. Now, I'm not saying that's what BP are doing, but to really stand out in the market, if a lot of companies with that focus are using green green, then you can imagine all the logos look green and how are you going to stand out on a visual basis anyway. I do agree using greens and yellows, it looks very... Because the logo is very warming. It's got that sun uplifting, positive element to it. It does work, I think, in that respect, whether that's what everybody takes from it or not. But I think it's also combined with their other activities and actions and what we see them do. So yeah, color psychology is a really interesting one. And there is some stat where there's like, in terms of what we connect with in terms of colors, it's very strong. We all recognize Coca-Cola's red, we'll recognize Tiffany's blue, and there's various other ones as well. In terms of the color side of ecology, it It definitely connects with emotions with us and how we feel. It's a big part of how it makes us feel. But it's also tied in with that particular brand personality, which then is with all the other brand assets as well to communicate that.
Melanie
I wanted to ask you about a brand or a business that goes by the person's name rather than by a title. When people set up their business, are they... Do you think... I'm going by your over 20 years experience here. Okay. Yeah, I looked at the website.
Esther
She did her homework.
Melanie
I did my homework. Do you encourage people to go with their name because it evokes more of a personal relationship, or do you feel it might be easier to remember and more catchy to go with a title of some description, or is it a case-by-case basis?
Vardeep
I don't think there's any hard and fast rules here, to be honest. I rebranded myself a few years ago as The Branding Fox, primarily because I've been using my name up until then, and I did everything in all sorts of graphic design types of jobs. I wanted to make that distinction that now I was going to be on branding. There's also the issue with my name. It's fairly straightforward, but still people would struggle to remember it. I wanted something that people would remember and associate me with it. I think also I had an idea of building some agency, so I think there was part of that reasoning behind it, although that shifted somewhat. In terms of what's right for you, I think, yes, that was the right decision for me, personally. But there's no real reason why somebody can't start with their own name. The benefits of using your own name is that you can chop and change a little bit in terms of perhaps what you do, your offers, your services, what you're known for, it can evolve a bit more with you. Whereas I think when you've got a name, it's almost like you're building that house a bit more and you're building those associations and what it is that you do. I think to To then shift, like we've spoken, it is a bit more of an overhaul in terms of rebranding. Potentially, using your own name is quite good for independent consultants or coaches, but not necessarily either. There's no reason why they can't use a business name as well. I think I haven't really quite answered your question.
Melanie
You've basically said everything's fine.
Esther
It depends.
Vardeep
It really depends. It depends on what your goal is, what you want to do, and also where you want to take your business as well, and what is right decision to match that.
Esther
Yeah. I don't think I could ever name my business after me because nobody can spell Esther.
Melanie
You've got too many names.
Esther
Not really. But nobody can spell Esther ever. Ever. That's confusing for people as it is. We talked about the size of the logo and making it fit on the vectors, because I'm just looking at my All my tabs open. We're recording this in Riverside, and it's got a little wave, which could depict a river. It could depict the waves of the sound waves from recording. It's very clever Obviously, we know the swoosh of the Nike logo, and we know the three stripes of the Adidas, Adidas, however you pronounce it. Is there more and more coming into play using those symbols and using those rather than the name? Because I'm thinking of Melanie's and she's got a circle. Her O of Stomp is very It could stand out on its own. For my own brand, IPA- Do you know the story behind that? No, but you can tell us in a minute after I say about IPA. Because IPA is three letters, then it fits on a thing, and it's our lettering makes us, it's different for us. Tell us about your O, Melanie.
Melanie
It's actually from the Royal Air Force. As you may be able to tell, Vardeep, I'm English. A million years ago, I wanted to join the Royal Air Force, and I tried a couple of times, and unfortunately, missed by a couple of points each time. But it's always been there. I've always wanted to be a part of the Royal Air Force. In fact, as a teen, I was part of the Air Cadets, because that's where the interest came from. I saw it as a target, which is also what the Royal Air Force use it for. Obviously, I do targeted training. It was just a little nod at a pasturing and the fact that I do targeted training.
Vardeep
That's a really interesting story. A nice story behind your logo as well.
Melanie
More interesting than hers.
Esther
We've rebranded a number of times. I was mentioning to Vardydeep whenever we talked previous to the podcast that we even started off with a different name. We were IPA Solutions before and now we're IPA Group, and with that has come different. The color has always stayed the same, but different lettering and different fonts and typologies Typography, and we nerded out about typography with Angie a few episodes ago. So you can go and listen to the nerding out of that. But it does take a lot of effort to rebrand, to even changing your colors because you're thinking, I've got to change all my social media posts and my website.
Melanie
And then it's all the other stuff. It's all the roll-up banners. Head of I've got a tablecloth that I'd need to change. And it would be... Some people got sign writing to change and business cards and leaflets and flyers. And so it's a huge deal.
Esther
So obviously for people like BP, they've got the money to make the changes. And I remember seeing a couple of years ago that the Royal Bank of Scotland, RBS, rebranded from capital letters to lowercase letters and cost them millions.
Melanie
Like, the upside, they do print their own money.
Esther
Well, that's true. But how much would a rebrand cost a normal run-of-the-mill? 95 % of the entrepreneurs and freelancers? And what are we talking about in terms of ballpark area for a rebrand?
Vardeep
Yeah, that's a really tricky question to answer. It depends. It depends. I mean, this is the same with any service. You can get a service for tens of pounds, hundreds of pounds, thousands of pounds, tens of thousands of pounds, or hundreds of thousands of pounds. If you're looking at the RBS rebrand, and that's probably, I don't know, hundreds of thousands, million maybe. I honestly don't know. It's essentially the same thing that you would do for a smaller business because you'd have to roll out and go through the same exercises. It's a smaller output and a smaller strategy because the organization won't be as large or as complex, but the same amount of work still goes in. It's a little bit like a hand on a piece of string because you've got different experts who have to be able to Bring different sorts of skills and experience to the job. You've also got different budgets and different elements of what actually needs to be rebranded and what you need to do and what you might not need to do. It's a hard question to give you an idea. Unfortunately, that is a case by case.
Esther
Yeah. Okay.
Melanie
I have another question because he was just about to open his mouth and say another one. If Somebody came up to you and said, I've just found out that I look like another brand, how would you help them? Because that's going to be fairly hard. They probably There's a good chance they're probably ground in as this particular brand. How do they emergency update their brand? Is there any tactics you could outline to people to consider?
Vardeep
The best option is to trademark your logo and perhaps your IP. That's relevant as well before you start.
Melanie
They would need to change it?
Vardeep
Well, I don't know about the nuances. If they haven't trademarked and they've already found out that somebody has copied it, and then they go through your trademarking process. But the whole trademarking process is not an overnight fix. It can take a little while, and you might not get it straight away because you've got to look at the other businesses, similar businesses in your category, to know that you're not also infringing on anything else or anybody else in terms of what they look like and name and what have you. Unfortunately, I think that's We are in this online world and people can copy and take whatever they want, maybe to our knowledge or not. That would be the first step. If you're serious about where you're taking this business and this is the right path for you and you want to be grabbing this, then yes, trademark your assets before you go too far down that road. You can sometimes reach out to these people who have copied it and see what they say. They might have trademarked something, so it's good to look into that. But the best option would be to speak to someone, a trademark lawyer or IP type base, to get the best advice, really, on what those next steps are. But yeah, it happens, and it happens to even bigger businesses who-.
Melanie
Happened to me.
Vardeep
Did it really?
Melanie
Yeah. I had to trademark my brand because somebody came along after me looking very similar. So I trademarked myself. I've literally just this month renewed my 10-year trademark. It lost 10 years.
Vardeep
You did this after you'd found out?
Melanie
Yeah.
Vardeep
Okay.
Melanie
I found out. I've been in business 18 months and somebody came along and other people said, oh, you're doing something new. You're doing this instead. I was like, No. People were actually confusing me for them and vice versa. Then when I looked, I was like, oh, wow, we look really similar. I got some guidance, and as you said, I got my business trademarked, and I'm so glad I did.
Vardeep
It just gives you a bit of peace of mind, doesn't it, as well as security to know that... Because if it's just you or it's just a small team of you, it's still you give a lot of time and effort and energy to your business. It's quite disheartening to see somebody else just come along and just suddenly go, I'm just going to take all your skills and your knowledge.
Melanie
You don't always know if it's deliberate, though, do you?
Vardeep
No.
Melanie
I do think sometimes people accidentally get inspired by something they flicked through. Then they go, Where did I see that? Especially these days, we've got so many platforms. Do I see it on Facebook? Do I see it on LinkedIn? Was it Google Search? It's really difficult to go back to the stuff that you may have been previously inspired by. I don't think it's always deliberate. I think this one was, but I don't think it's always deliberate. It was an education, which is why I thought I'd bring it up here.
Vardeep
Yeah. Now, it's an interesting point. I think there's a hypnotist. I want to say Paul McKenna, but I'm not entirely sure. I think what he does with some of his shows is he very structures people's journey to his place or his room. On their journey, they will pass certain posters or information or they have interactions. Then when he asks them questions as part of his thing with them, they will name the words that they've seen or colors that they've seen somewhere, which is really interesting. So yes, I absolutely agree. Sometimes we just see a lot of stuff and not quite sure where we've seen it yet.
Esther
But that brings us back to if you are starting up a new one, go through the process of like a questionnaire or a review and check online. You can take pictures of things and Google AI searches of, is this the same or similar to things? All very interesting. We could talk for ours here, ladies, but everyone needs to get on with their businesses. So Vardeep, how can people get in touch with you?
Vardeep
So you can find me at The Branding Fox on Instagram, LinkedIn, as well as my website.
Esther
Brilliant. Well, have you any parting comments, Melanie? Anything else you would like to add?
Melanie
Parting comments. I think that branding is a really fast moving space, isn't it, Bar deep? And I don't think we can ever really stay fully, truly on top of all the adaptations and adoptions that we should be making. But there's no harm in speaking to a consultant, just like Vardeep, who is in touch with all these updates and changes. They're devoted to it. They think about it. They sleep, eat, walk. God, what a dull life.
Esther
We do that for everything else as well.
Melanie
This is true, I suppose.
Esther
Every business does it. Eat, sleep, breathe it.
Melanie
That's why you have these professionals out there. So find the time and the space to reach out to these specialists because they know what they're talking about, they're passionate about it, and they could just give you that, that invigoration that you might just need. Was that good enough?
Esther
I think that was perfect. Thank you, Vardeep, for joining us today, and we'll be back next week with another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing podcast. Until then, bye-bye.
Bye.
Vardeep
Bye.
Melanie
See, she waves as well.
Esther
I saw that.
Vardeep
I'm so sorry. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to do anything or not.
Melanie
She has to go out.
Vardeep
It was just automatic.
Esther
It's the video. It just makes people wave.
Vardeep
I always wave. I love it.
