Some of you may have already noticed that we’ve taken the whole ‘New Year, New You’ thing to a whole new level with a new name, new address, new website, new collateral, new brand colours, new font, new photography etc etc – yes, you’ve guessed it – we’ve rebranded!
Rebrands happen to all kinds of companies and organisations and they are either 'evolutionary' or 'revolutionary' – think M&S – their rebrand positioned them to an entirely new, young and trendy audience while retaining their existing loyal customer base. The intention for rebranding is always the same, ‘to differentiate the business or service in the minds of the target market’, and this was exactly the thinking behind the rebrand from Little Bird PR to Sunny Bird PR.
When I first started Little Bird PR I anticipated that most of our clients would be either national or regional businesses that were based locally. We do indeed have clients based locally but thanks to exceptional growth over the last few years, Little Bird PR actually gained clients from all over the globe. We love our new friends but not all of them get the English colloquialism ‘a little bird told me’, so, we have rebranded to make us more world friendly as well of course to better represent our growth.
A successful rebrand can in no way be rushed and needs to employ the very best in cohesive design across the website, social media, signage and collateral. We employed Hello Big Idea, a creative studio in the U.S to design and implement our transition from Little Bird PR to Sunny Bird PR. It was crucial that our new branding represented the energy and dynamic nature of the team and I felt that Hello Big Idea understood what we were looking for and would know how to translate that ‘feeling’ into branding.
I wanted the new website to showcase the amazing work my team have done and the results that we have achieved for clients. I know from speaking to businesses that seeing tangible results from PR is crucial so I wanted the new website to demonstrate these results clearly and concisely. I wanted to prove to potential clients that an investment in PR with us would achieve their goals and objectives as it has done for our existing clients.
For the rebrand we started out with a mood board that captured our colours and style as well as inspiring images, phrases and textures to help develop and guide the mood of the rebrand. I really wanted the team to be involved with every step of the process as they’ve helped us get to where we are today and I want them to be proud of that and excited about where we’re going next. As Hello Big Idea created different ideas and concepts for logos and branding colours I always made a point of sitting down with the team to get their feedback and to see which styles and designs they preferred. We chose bright, bold, vibrant and fresh colours as we thought this best represented our approach to business and demonstrated that we weren’t afraid to try new things. The colours also evoke a feeling of positivity and really bring the brand to life.
When it came to logos I felt it was important to have our ‘main’ logo which would be on our website and on most of our brand collateral as well as a separate logo specifically for social media as it’s essential in building brands. For the main logo Hello Big Idea developed a signature style logo that incorporated our various brand colours.
It was important to me that we used the best in the business throughout the rebrand to reflect our own approach to business. As a Bournemouth-based company I also felt it was important to employ local companies wherever possible so for the new website imagery we drafted in a great local company, Double Exposure Photographic, to come in and shoot us hard at work for the day so we could use some original and personal shots for the website. It was really important to me that the whole team were involved with the shoot. We planned out the different ideas that we wanted for each page of the site, choreographed the shoot and ensured we were using the new brand colours and working within the new guidelines.
While Hello Big Idea was busy making us an all singing, all dancing, beautiful new website, we worked on getting all the other elements into place. We had outgrown our previous office space so we found a new creative space for the team which we designed to ensure the new interior was in line with our new branding. As well as this, we also needed to think about exterior design so employed BCP, a local signage company, to do the all-important job of letting everyone know where we are.
New stationary was designed for us in the form of thank you cards, compliment slips and business cards. As my team are so individual and vibrant I wanted their personalities to shine through on their business cards and email signatures so they chose their own colour combinations and photos making them fun and diverse while keeping in line with our new brand look and colours.
With this in mind, I decided against the more traditional photo-shoot for the staff and went for a more personal approach. The team have all got such big personalities with different strengths and skills and I wanted their photos to show that. As we speak to journalists all day, every day I think it’s really nice to add that personal touch with a photo of us in the signature so that journalists can put a face to a name (if we’ve not already met them) to help build those all-important relationships.
Another personal touch was asking the team to write each other’s profiles on the Who We Are section of the new website, this was a great exercise and really injected a sense of fun into our new profiles as we’re much too modest to blow our own trumpets!
As I’m sure you can tell, the whole team thoroughly enjoyed the rebrand and were involved from beginning to end which really made it feel like we were all rebranding together rather than it just happening around them. Now, as we start the New Year, we have a new, stronger identity behind us to drive us forward into 2017! For those of you who haven’t met us yet we look forward to meeting you as Sunny Bird PR.
In the meantime, take a look at our brand board and see if it gives you any inspiration for your own rebrand…
