How to find your niche (so your niche can find you)
Here’s what we’ve learned from rebranding.
When it comes to brand awareness, speaking clearly to your specific audience is more effective than trying to be heard and understood by everyone. Understandably, branding, and rebranding, exercises can fall by the wayside in favour of the work that keeps the lights on. However, there's a lot of opportunity to be found in being specific and intentional with your brand and audience identity.
In the interest of owning our value as a women-led creative studio, we took on a rebrand ourselves this year to more clearly communicate our value to our best-fit clients. Two things became abundantly clear as value we bring to the table.
First, we’re a team of women led by women. We lead with radical empathy that produces uniquely resonant work. We listen, we’re intuitive, and we’re confident without letting ego get in the way.
Second, we like to have fun: both on and off the clock. Our wealth of experience in craft alcohol and cannabis, combined with our unique team dynamic, is a unique and powerful offering to companies marketing adult fun. If this is you, we won’t mind if you take a break from reading this blog to view our portfolio or reach out to our Account Director.
Absolutely shameless self-promo aside (hey, you came to our website!), we’ve learned a lot through this process. If you’re considering rebranding, narrowing or pivoting your area of focus, we’d love to be your guides as you reinvent yourself.
Let’s get real. It’s very easy for a rebranding exercise to turn into a lofty thought experiment unless there are strong parameters guiding the process. Before you’re too far down the path, you might begin by asking yourself the following questions:
Once you’ve got an idea of the answers to these questions, you can fact check them with people you know and trust, and vice versa.
Now that you’ve answered some pre-departure questions, it’s time to check if the answers are true and/or helpful to your mission. The cool thing about a re-brand is that the exercise isn’t theoretical, it actually serves to describe the reality of the work you’re already doing. In other words, you have people, both internal and external, who can offer valuable insights on how your brand functions.
Congrats, you made it to the fun part: dreaming up your new brand. This is also the part that has the most potential to spin out of control, create strife and bloat your timelines. Here are some other baseline considerations for getting the most fruitful brainstorms.
Okay, so you’ve solidified your brand’s name, visual identity, and tone of voice. Now to remember all the places where your old branding is featured, and ensure consistency across all the extensions of your brand’s functioning.
Anyone who has ever gotten impulse bangs knows, it’s both exciting and scary to change your appearance and identity. If you feel yourself getting cold feet, or second guessing the moves you’re making, remind yourself of the following.
BOLD LIP has a wealth of experience building brands that stand out and make sense. We’ve all worked as both brand builders and as the people who bring them to life day-to-day. Get in touch so we can help co-create the best version of your brand.