Thanks Art of Marketing!

“I am genuinely impressed with the work from this year’s REBRAND 100 Global entrants,” said Callison Executive Vice President and 2010 juror, Paula Stafford. “It is apparent companies are working hard to provide a 360 degree, comprehensive brand language. They see the value and strength of consistency, clarity of identity and message in reaching their respective audiences. Some entries were spot on in connecting with their targeted customers, patients and clients.”

To select winners, a new, international panel of industry experts convenes yearly to review the best of the submissions. They consider “before” and “after” images of brand transformations with written summaries. Emphasis was on executed strategy that made an emotional connection, and met the stated objectives and needs of the identified target market. Jurors were unaware of the brand strategist’s name and size when reviewing the projects. Consequently, a small consulting firm had as much opportunity to be selected as did global organizations.

Over 36 industries and 29 countries are represented among the 2010 winners. They ranged from the City of Pula’s Office of Tourism in Croatia to Nike, and Walmart, the worlds largest retailer. Some of the competing brand consultants included Interbrand, Radley Yeldar, Lippincott, and Siegel+Gale, in addition to in-house teams, small agencies, and representatives of multinational corporations. The rebrand could have been an enterprise-wide effort, a change in a single brand component, or a brand extension.

The 2010 panel of 10 included Friederike Biegel, Director of Strategy, Peter Schmidt Group in Germany; Founder, Director & Principal Designer; Ashwini Deshpande of India-based Elephant Strategy + Design; Uche Nworah, Channel Brand Manger for Glo; Andrew Gorman, Creative Director, Radley Yeldar, and Kit Hinrichs, former Pentagram Partner and founder Studio-Hinrichs.

About The AGRI-TREND Group of Companies.
AGRI-TREND has 4 main operating divisions servicing agricultural clients across Canada, the US and as far away as Australia. AGRI-TREND has expertise in Agronomy, Carbon Credits, Grain Marketing, and Precision Farming. In addition, they have also developed an industry leading data management platform, tailored exclusively for their clients. To learn more about AGRI-TREND, visit them online at www.agritrend.com.

About REBRAND™ and the REBRAND 100® Global Awards:
REBRAND™ is the first, and only expert-led, global resource focused on brand transformations. Its REBRAND 100® Global Awards, is the highest, recognition for excellence in brand repositioning. Featured in such media as The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, BusinessWeek, and Yahoo! Finance, the annual awards has entry deadlines in late September. View case studies from numerous industries at www.rebrand.com

Also new to our team is Angela Waite, joining as a lead Agricultural Account Manager. With an Ag degree in hand, and a solid track record of marketing experience with a number of Ag organizations and agencies, Angela’s insight and expertise will become an invaluable resource to our growing roster of Agri-Business clients. Angela is also a master wordsmith, and will be providing top notch writing services to our entire client base.

You can learn more (and see the hot off the press avatars) by visiting our People page.

Welcome aboard Bryan & Angela!

1. Relevance: Companies and brands need to stay relevant to their target audience, and let’s face it, audiences change. When your target evolves and starts to sniff out competitors, it may be because they feel their first preference (you) is no longer relevant. Rebrands in this case often are accompanied by new product offerings.

2. Mergers & Acquisitions: When 2 companies are combined, there are likely 2 unique audiences left to communicate to. Sometimes it is a matter of re-packaging the company / brand in a way that will appeal to both. In other cases however, one of the brands may remain dominant, and simply go through a refresh.

3. Innovation: Technology surely evolves faster than any brand, and if your company / brand is dependent upon technology and you are consistently innovating, then a rebrand should follow your natural path of innovation. It is an outward expression of your companies evolution and will keep audiences coming back to see ‘what’s new’.

4. Reposition: Taking a brand to a new position is difficult (value to premium for example), and requires a company to think about the new audience they are hoping to acquire. They likely have a different DNA than the old audience, and it’s often best to re-launch a brand to target this new demographic. Often, brands will not necessarily rebrand a current label, but rather create a new freestanding brand to float into the market.

5. Rejuvenation: The greatest brands in the world consistently update and refresh their look to stay contemporary and fresh. We find that 10 years is often the max threshold for consideration of a rebrand. In cases where a company has a 25 year old ‘look’, they will probably find themselves looking over their shoulder often at the up and coming brands who are demonstrating innovation and business evolution. If you have the mind set of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ (pardon my backwoods grammar), I would encourage you to consider a ‘brand refresh’. This maintains and celebrates the history and heritage of your brand, but shows your audience (current and future) that you are adaptive to change.

6. Outgrowth: Small companies can become big companies if they’re good at what they do, but small companies often start with meager logo’s & visuals. This is mainly for budget reasons (or perhaps their artistically oriented nephew was commissioned for the original design in exchange for a box of shiny new pencil crayons). There comes a point when a company will become more sophisticated then the look they are carrying, and that is usually the best time to rebrand.

Reasons NOT to rebrand

1. Too young: If you’ve unrolled a company or brand to the marketplace in the past 3 years, it’s probably not the best time to rebrand. It takes time to evolve a brand into something genuine and unique, and it’s wise to avoid the costly process of rebranding to try and ‘sell’ more. Often, a different approach to marketing or new campaign can help.

2. Change for the sake of change: It’s not a great idea to rebrand if the only reason you have is because you ‘want’ to. If there is no new innovation, attitude, behavior or product position, then consumers will be left with a flat experience. Imagine if a restaurant sells crummy food, and start to lose market share. They decide to rebrand to bring people back, yet still sell the same crummy food. This is a sure recipe for failure (no pun intended) as they’ll almost certainly lose that customer for life.

What’s really exciting about this program for our customers is that we provide the service on a fixed fee monthly basis, so all of your costs (marketing, strategic, interactive, branding, writing and so on) are amortized throughout the year. Fixed costs can be critical in helping to smooth out budget wrinkles which can make effective market timing difficult, and gives you a steady partner to focus on your marketing initiatives (both on and offline) while you focus on the other parts of your business. Check out more info on the program by clicking here!

Logo’s are a critical piece of the puzzle and here’s why. Before a brand has a chance to achieve greatness, it is judged thousands of times over. It sets the tone for how the brand is positioned. It gives visual queues to the consumer on what they should ‘expect’ from that brand. If the brand is set to hold a premium position in the market place, then the design should reflect a premium look. Consumers will expect to pay premium pricing, and you will eliminate pesky non consumers (cheapskates) from the mix. If the logo is designed to be the value leader, a simpler, slightly more generic look is often best. Take a look around and you can see the difference, KIA versus Mercedes, Banana Republic versus Wal-Mart. Coca Cola versus the ‘house’ brand.

Ultimately, a logo’s job is to set expectations, and be a unique signature for an organization. More importantly it represents the position the company expects to hold (we refer to it as relevance). If it doesn’t, you may have only 2 choices; re-brand or re-position. More on both topics in future posts!

Recently, they have expanded into three separate divisions to meet the needs and demands of a growing market: Energy, Bio-Diesel and Ethanol, creating value for its shareholders through a blended business development strategy of exploration and production.

To accommodate this growth, blue-horizon.ca was recently revamped by RFX to showcase the mandate and vision behind each one of the divisions. In years past, RFX also developed the corporate identity and brand architecture for the Blue Horizon Group of Companies.
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