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Rebranding presents a dilemma: it’s all about change, but it’s about customers Love Consistency.
Although a rebrand offers the potential for new markets, increased exposure and stronger positioning, balancing a desire for change with a coherent story is critical to the success of a rebrand.
That’s where your brand style guide comes in: it’s a single document that provides comprehensive guidelines on every component of your brand so you can project a coherent and consistent image and story.
In short, while rebrands are about change, style guides are inherently about consistency.
And with a good style guide to guide your brand communications, your customers will recognize, trust, and strengthen their loyalty to your brand much faster than they would otherwise.
When I helped my company Atom with a high-profile rebrand, I confirmed that a style guide is an essential part of a rebrand. Here’s what I learned.
Our story: The role of the style guide in rebranding to Atom
Launched in 2011 under the name Squadhelp, Atom was initially a crowdsourcing naming platform that offered an effective and innovative solution to the problem of finding a meaningful name for a meaningful idea.
Over time, we have expanded our offering to include a full suite of startup tools and made domain sales a core part of our business. With this development we have grown beyond our original name. To continue to grow the business, we needed a new platform to tell our customers a better story of our business: Atom: where it all begins.
Of course, rebranding is a big challenge. We had to communicate our new name and message to our various stakeholders and our various teams, including sales, customer service, engineering, and my own content and communications team. Creating a brand style guide was one piece of this puzzle.
When building a brand or rebranding, a style guide is crucial internal Communication; After that, it will help you communicate with the public.
Why you need a style guide
When marketing yourself to other companies, you can lose sight of the human connection. A brand style guide ensures consistency, defines your identity, and strengthens key relationships in your industry.
Brand consistency can increase sales by 20%And with a brand style guide, you can ensure that every customer interaction is perfectly aligned with the brand. The sum of these interactions is your industry reputation – a fundamental piece of the puzzle for B2B companies.
This is a good reason to create a style guide. Here’s more:
- Create a unique identity through your choice of style
- Improve your brand awareness by associating your brand with powerful images
- Build trust through consistency
- Find clarity across all communication channels, from social to email
- Create instant recognition through typography and color palettes
A rebranding disrupts the otherwise smooth positioning of your brand and makes a clear strategy all the more important.
How to write a style guide for your rebranding in five steps
1. Review your brand mission
Your brand’s mission and values are powerful ways to connect with your audience:
- How do you change your customers’ operations?
- How do you impact the entire industry?
- Are you promoting sustainable business practices or optimizing internal communications?
Put these core values at the center of your style guide plan and refer to them when formulating subsequent design and tone decisions.
At Atom, our rebrand style guide put trust and expertise at the heart of our new identity, and that’s why they’re at the heart of our style guide.
2. Reexamine your target audience
If your audience changes as part of your rebrand, this should be reflected in your style guide. Do they want to hear a formal or casual tone in your language? Are they attracted to an academic and analytical vocabulary or to a layman’s tone?
Your rebrand may expand the scope of your services, which means you need to appeal to a wider audience than before. You may need to expand your language to cover a wider range of experiences and expertise among your customers.
In order to make this communication effective, it is important to know who you are communicating with.
3. Redefine your brand’s tone
The next step in creating your style guide is defining or redefining your brand’s tone.
Your tone of voice should be based on an understanding of both your values and your customers’ needs and expectations.
Growth causes many companies to deviate from their original brand tone. When you’re just starting out, you may have exposure to a close-knit group of customers, which may be reflected in a casual, playful brand tone built on familiarity. On the other hand, you may have never thought about a consistent tone and just ended up being flat and matter-of-fact!
When writing your style guide for a rebrand, it’s important to consider how much of what you have you want to keep. For example, Squadhelp could get a little technical at times, whereas a lot of our writing was focused on “fun.” I wanted Atom to communicate technical concepts clearly and remain friendly. That’s why part of our tone guidelines is to remain positive while addressing customer needs clearly and specifically.
4. Create your style template
Your style sheet should consist of the colors, typography, and design elements your brand will be known for. The consistency of these stylistic choices will make you instantly recognizable in a crowded market.
Humans are visual creatures. The design decisions of your old brand are, whether consciously or unconsciously, closely linked to your brand, and you should carry over as many of these elements as possible in small steps into your style guide for the new brand.
However, you still have leeway in introducing new style elements into your rebranded identity. For example, consider taking your current foreground colors and incorporating them into the background.
5. Maintain continuity in tone
You have built valuable relationships with your customers and it will be crucial that you provide these customers with a sense of continuity.
Whether you’re modernizing your brand or refocusing your service, a primary goal of your rebranding should be to translate as much brand equity as possible into your new brand’s voice.
So what do you keep? When I was writing our new brand guidelines, I considered what worked about Squadhelp’s voice and decided that Atom needed to use the “funny” tone that we kept using – but in a slightly toned down version so that it wouldn’t distracted.
Conclusion: A style guide makes your rebranding understandable
Your post-rebrand style guide is crucial to letting your customers know what has changed and what has stayed the same. It can also play a fundamental role in how that message is communicated.
When rebranding, the message is important. Whatever your reasons for rebranding, your previous brand was missing something. Your style guide ensures that your new brand arrives: it comes into the world whole, without any doubts about what you stand for. The style guide becomes a resource for all your employees, keeping them informed and can help media companies and agencies effectively promote your new brand.
Whether you’re rebranding or simply getting serious about presenting a cohesive brand identity, you need a style guide. Try it AI tool for brand building to make it easier for you to get started.
More rebranding resources and style guides
Why You Need a Brand Style Guide (Even If You Think You Don’t)
Anatomy of a Rebrand (Part 2 of 3): So You Need a New Identity…Now What?
Five to-do’s for a rebrand that rocks
How to Rename a 10-Year-Old Company in Six Weeks