Rebranding Your Image

Rebranding is when a company changes their current image. There are a lot of reasons why a company can choose to rebrand. Maybe they changed their product, or their image is no longer relevant. Sometimes a takeover happens and rebranding goes along with it. They could even have a bad reputation and are trying to fix it. When I was in New Orleans for the American Marketing Association’s Collegiate Conference we were told of their rebranding project that we would be involved with. Since we are a marketing association it is very important to stay up to date with marketing trends and our brand image is very important. My guess is they wanted to stay relevant which is why they are rebranding. Since the American Marketing Association (AMA) is so large it will take a long time for everyone to change the image we are given over a year to update everything and a huge packet full of resources to help. For our chapter, there is not much to do except change our online logo’s and a banner. In my opinion the banner needed updating anyway so this just helps us along. My first step was to tell the chapter about the new changes. It was already accepted by professional chapters. I started this by playing the video they had for us at conference which you can find here. From there I explained the new logo with is below. It spells out AMA but in an interesting way. It also shortens their new motto “Answers in Action”. The first A is an up arrow to show upward movement the second A is pointing right meaning forward thinking. It also has a double meaning because it makes a greater than sign to show we are above the rest. 

Presidents received an email with instructions on how to move forward. I found this very useful. It had everything you could imagine. Digital images to add your school name to for social media accounts, banner logos, even logos for napkins.

Sometimes rebranding is not always taken so well. For example, Gap created a new logo in 2010 and it had so much backlash that it was reversed in one week. That is thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours spent just to throw it away. It is important to have a reason to rebrand and let your stakeholders know why you are rebranding. Looking closer to home, Ohio Northern University also went through a rebranding period last semester. Being in various organizations I learned that some of the most important things about rebranding is people being accepting of the new brand. While I understand AMA’s new brand because they had a speaker discuss it I am still unaware of why Ohio Northern went through a rebrand. My suggestion would be to create a short video discussing the new brand so students can get behind it and support it.

If you want to rebrand yourself for personal use go through your social media and remove or hide what you do not want the public to see. Understand that employers and other people can still find it, but maybe the cute guy you friended on Facebook will not see it. I went through and removed any whiny Instagram posts a few years ago and I am cautious of my captions now. It is harder for a site like Facebook especially when you have been on it for so long. I get memories to show up for me every day and if I do not like what I said I remove the post. It will take a year to clean up, but I am sure that I will take care of everything. 

What are your thoughts on AMA’s rebrand? Here is the previous logo so you can compare. Let me know your thoughts.