In-House Designer Company Rebranding Strategies

27Mar09

In the second answer to a new member’s question here are some items to keep in mind if your in-house department is going to brand or rebrand your company.  (The first was a question on Books for In-House Designers.)

When you take on the branding for your company it’s extremely important to have a strong plan and get the stake holders on board before you start. As an internal person this process could become so drawn out it never ends, unlike with an outside agency where the decision to do a rebrand has been made and the meter is running and the invoices are coming in.

This is another opportunity to show your company that your in-house department runs like a design agency and give them a proposal as if you are going up against other agencies for the job. This also works if your company is about to hire an agency and you think you can do it — ask them if you can give a pitch and be included.

As everyone here is a designer we’re going to skip the design part of this article and talk about the start—The Proposal—and the end—The Implementation.

The Proposal

When I have presented this exact project to a past company (at the time we were up against outside agencies and eventually won the deal) I gathered the main stake holders (CEO, CFO, President, VP of Corporate Strategy, etc) and walked through a Keynote presentation with them.

If your stake holders already understand the need for branding or rebranding you are golden. If not, it’s worth holding an initial meeting solely to discuss what branding is (we recommend the book The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
as a good starting point. There are lots of resources out there for this.

Whether you have been asked to do the rebranding, are hoping to win the project from an outside agency or this is your idea to begin with the proposal should have the same parts:

1. About You — this is your chance to show off your “design street cred”. Even your boss may not know that you have worked at one of the best branding agencies in your state, the other stake holders may have no idea where you came from or what you’ve done. A section explaining why you are the right person for this job is a great place to start. You may also want to call out projects that you are completed since working at your company that have made an impact.
2. Choosing In-House—Make it clear that this is a choice. Your company could go to an outside firm, but you are going to show them that they don’t need to. You are also setting yourself up as an expert, you aren’t doing this just because you are on staff, you’re doing it because you are the right choice to do it. This point could be a post in and of itself. A great resource for understanding the facts to present to your boss is David Baker’s Recourses website. Register and download his white papers.
3. Establish what you know about the project — talk about the employees, the company, the industry and the clients.
4. Discuss your “fees”—sure you aren’t going to ask for $300,000 on top of your salary to do the branding project, but you may need a few things (a better printer, a PR freelancer, a better work table, a better computer, etc). If you can justify these costs by what your company is saving by going internal and they will help you complete this job, then go for it.
5. Discuss what will be outsourced—you can’t do everything, and you need to let your company know that. You may want to find an agency that can do your media buys such as billboards, newspaper, etc. As an in-house designer you may not have ties to these companies and it’s cheaper to pay a middle-man to do this for you.
6. Discuss hard costs—rebranding gets expensive. Calculate what you’ll need to reprint or have made. Business cards, letterhead, corporate signage, etc. Call around and get rough estimates for these reprints. You will want to make sure the budget is ready when you are so you don’t redesign a logo that is only half-adopted and pollutes your companies efforts.
7. Discuss new elements—as you know, branding is not your logo. It’s not that simple. Your branding project may not even include a new or updated logo. In this proposal meeting you will want to discuss the new items you are bringing into the brand. Will you do some interior design? Will you add Social Media to the mix? Will you change the corporate uniform or dress code?
8. Next Steps—Remember, this is a proposal, not a meeting where you drone on about making things match. You will want to discuss what happens after the proposal meeting. These steps probably include:
   1. Saying Yes! Having your company make the choice to use your services.
   2. Approving a Budget
   3. Drawing up a Timeline
   4. Setting up another meeting to explain this process to the rest of the company
   5. Setting up the first of many design meetings to gather requirements

What if you make the pitch and your company goes with an outside firm anyway? It could happen and it’s not the end of the world, depending on the size of the project it may have been too much for you to handle with everything else they want you to do. Tell the decision makers that you understand and would like to be as involved as possible with the outside agency. This is an opportunity for you personally to see what their process is and why they are doing the branding and for you professionally to be around and meet more designers.

Implementation

Great, your company has chosen your department to handle their branding. You’ll go off and follow your design process, do some awesome stuff, get it ready and now it’s time to push it to the world.

Depending on the size of your company the implementation can be easy or it can be all seven layers of hell. I’ve done this both ways. I suggest you take the easier way, which involves more planing:

1. Give people a Heads Up—be considerate of your coworkers that will need to help you. You will want to notify everyone early enough that they can plan for the rebranding. Set a reasonable go live date and ask everyone to work towards it with you. Some people to keep in mind:
   1. Your web developer if you have one. Let this person know that the website is going to be rebranded and let them work it into his or her schedule like any normal project.
   2. Anyone who has a business card. They may want to make changes, start handing out the old ones like crazy or hold on to what they have so they don’t need a reprint between now and your go live date.
   3. Sales and Marketing people. They may have powerpoint templates or other sales materials that need to be updated. Give them plenty of time to get their updates ready and make sure you supply the with what they need to do their jobs and stay on brand. These people are often the front line to clients and can be notorious for not following brand in the pursuit of getting something done fast that works for them.
   4. Building maintenance people. If there is going to be new signage or new interior design they need to plan with you.
2. Establish Brand Managers—if your company is large you will want several people to be on your team to look out for things that aren’t on brand when you roll it out. Instead of trying to teach everyone how to follow your style guide find those people that are willing to help out and teach them everything you can then trust them to help you. This is also a good time to identify people that fancy themselves designers and get them in on the subject so they don’t interpret your new design as they see fit. Make sure your brand standards guide is cohesive and informative.
3. Launch and Celebrate—plan a party to celebrate the official launch of the new branding. This can be a time to hand out business cards, discuss the changes at a high level and request that people recycle their old materials.

While this article is long it only skims the knowledge that we have doing this sort of thing. I have recently left my post as the Creative Director for an in-house agency to go full time with my consulting firm. If you are planning an internal rebrand and are interested in some help I invite you to visit my website, www.SawayaConsulting.com and contact me. — Amber Sawaya

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Tags: branding, David Baker, design department, in-house design, letterhead, logo, rebranding, Recourses