It’s not hard to find a free logo. It could be clipart, a stock image you found on the internet, or maybe the guy who makes your vehicle decals offered to ‘do up a logo’ for your for free. Hey, even the IT guy knows a thing or 2 about graphic design right? While these may appear to have no cost associated, here is where you’ll pay:

Brand positioning
An experienced brand strategist and seasoned creative team can create an image that captures more than just what your company ‘does’. They can weave in the personality, aspirations and felt sense that you want your company to stand for over time. This is what separates authentic brand images from ‘logo’s. If your strategic position as a business (value, premium, boutique etc.) isn’t carefully crafted into your logo, the cost could be eroded pricing, premiums and missed customer engagements. People often will feel a certain way triggering a physical action based on a quick 2-second first impression, so you need to ask yourself; is the identity is really ‘speaking’ for your business?

Collateral Costs
Branding companies have the background and experience to see the complete landscape of future use for your company’s brand identity. Whether this is outdoor use, stationery, signage, vehicle, golf balls or the Good Year Blimp’ message board, a logo should be designed to be practical, legible and simple. It’s amazing how many times we’ve seen logos designed with a single purpose in mind and then require significant modifications over time.

Pre-Mature Rebrand
If you’ve been successful in your start-up, it may become evident very quickly that your logo is off the mark, it doesn’t stand for what the company is evolving into. This can trigger the need to re-design and re-launch the brand image far sooner than is normal resulting in confusion amongst your customers and prospects. It is certainly normal for companies to go through a systematic brand update from time to time, but these are often refreshes to sustain their growth rather than wholesale changes.

Ultimately, your brand should be authentic, unique, relevant and resilient. It’s unlikely that the source of the free logo was strategically engaged to a point of creating an identity that meets these criteria. We strongly encourage you to obtain the services of an experienced brand strategist or designer.

So, is a free logo really free? As my Dad used to tell me (at nauseam), “You get what you pay for, and you’ll pay for what you get!”.

The new identity needed to work towards both modernizing the club, and promoting the 2010 Provincial Grands & Alberta Championships – the sport’s premier provincial event that Calgary BMX Racing was chosen to host.

Drawing upon the diverse talents of our team, RFX was very enthusiastic about taking the project on, and offered our services for nothing more than in-kind support.

Art Director, Bryan McCloskey’s past experiences in skateboarding apparel design strongly contributed to striking the right tone and balance of the new logo design, combined with a custom illustration (by Jason Klapak also of RFX) in the form of a promotional poster, cemented an exciting new creative identity platform for the club.

Response to the poster and new identity was overwhelming and helped Calgary BMX Racing present the best-attended and most successful BMX event ever held within the province of Alberta. Lance Mottershead, president of Calgary BMX Racing commented; “the on-point reinvention of the identity greatly advanced recognition of our club and brought a legitimacy to sport that hasn’t been recognized since it’s inclusion in the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games”.

In early 2011 RFX was once again engaged to further broaden the Calgary BMX Racing brand by completely rebuilding the club’s stale and ineffective website.

Launched May 1^st, the new website is proving to be a most effective information tool for both new recruits and returning club members. With vastly improved functionality, clean interface and intuitive navigation, the Calgary BMX Racing website sets a new standard in not-for-profit sport organization communications.

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.