Given your brand is a method of communicating business personality quickly and creating a unique signifier, as your services evolve your brand should evolve with it.

However you chose to do this, there should always be a consideration about how the updates/refresh is going to be perceived by customers. Everyone from your dedicated client base to people who notice you in passing will have an opinion on the changes you make.

Any brand updates should be aligned with the changes within the business, a few examples are:

• Evolving market – supplying additional services on top of existing

• Merger/amalgamation – Joining the structure of another business

• Takeover – acquiring the assets outright of an existing company

• Each situation requires a specific contextual understanding to the branding updates

Evolving Market

If you are in a position to expand the services you provide, the likelihood is your brand is recognised within the specific sector. Any branding changes should incorporate similarities or a gentle ‘nod’ to your existing. It helps keep a degree of recognition within the market place.

Small details are enough; keeping a similar colour scheme, including one or 2 previously used icons, sticking to the same font even if everything else is very different. Any changes should be thought of as an evolution of the current taking into account the projected direction of the business and the tone of the new services.

Merger/amalgamation

Much like evolving markets, branding mergers should take to incorporate elements of the previous two brands. If there is a split in the level of control, then the scale of incorporation should reflect so. There is more chance with a merger to create a new brand altogether but it is wise for the first year of operations to ensure the previous brands are displayed in some capacity to ensure the client base is aware they are being helped by the same team.

Takeover

Takeover gives the biggest opportunity to go in a completely new direction with brand identity. Takeover will generally be the result of either an unsuccessful business or one which is performing really well.

In the even of an unsuccessful business, the aim is to tell clients they can still use the company for the same services but the new brand is bigger and better than what was there before. Going for a very modern brand approach, clean lines, harmonious colours will help to show the intent of stepping away from what was there before. It shows a understanding of current fashions/trends and the desire to ensure the future of the services.

If the business was successful, the most straightforward method is to put the existing brand as a subrand of the new owners. Keep the same name but change the font/colour schemes to match the new ownership. “Part of the XXX Group” helps drive home that it is now part of a multi-disciplinary company with more resources at hand and a great bank of knowledge to call upon should the customer ever need, but still the same company providing customers with what they are accustomed.