Why Refresh your Brand?

Why Refresh
Your Brand?

Any brand can drift over time. It’s important to stay sharp on what you’re about and why you’re amazing. When a brand gets tired, everyone can feel it. Time to freshen up.

It’s easy not to bother. Keep calm and carry on. But keeping your brand in good health is so important. When it’s off, it gradually starts to lower the tone. First internally – it gets people down if they feel they’re working somewhere that feels a bit ‘meh’. Then externally. The temperature drops. It just feels weirdly hard to sell, open a door or drum up support.

We’re always impressed when someone at a brand stands up and says “We’re better than this.” Because it takes high standards, courage to admit, and it’ll take some time, focus and money to address. The good news is it’s never everything that’s broken. You can fix stuff in a priority order and lift things up quite quickly.

“When you have a brand that works well it’s something that stretches you into the future and into what’s possible.”
Poppy MardallFounder & CEO, Poppy's

Marketplaces have always been competitive. New entrants to defend against. Bigger players with more resources than you. A lot of brand owners worry about falling behind. But the truth is it’s never been a better time to be just be you. Own your secret sauce and jar it up.

Great brands make sure the label’s right at all times. It might need ripping off every five years or so. Maybe it needs an upgrade every few months. Whatever the right pace for your brand, you just want to be able to say to yourself: this is who we really are, this is how we should look, and this is why there’s no-one else quite like us.

Every brand needs a centre

It’s normal for organisations to broaden what they offer over time. But without a clear centre, a brand can start feeling confused.

Longleat needed focus, with an offer encompassing a stately home, safari park, luxury accommodation, acres of forests and more. We reset the house as the heart of the brand, positioning as “Britain’s most astonshing stately home”. This elevated the house as a heritage centrepiece and celebrated Lord & Lady Bath’s role as hosts.

From our work with Longleat

Find your deeper meaning

Stanhope have been developing iconic parts of London since the 1980s, from Tate Modern to Television Centre. They’ve earned an amazing reputation for what they do – their places that endure, and their people stay for years and years. They’re about longevity.

We arrived at the positioning line “Great places stand the test of time” to cement that. It allowed us to celebrate the work they do, but also underscores their own maturity as a business and team with depths of experience.

From our work with Stanhope.

Well positioned companies grow fast

That’s Rich, director of growth at Thriva, showing you what happened to his subscriber numbers when he hired Lovers.

It’s quite a simple repositioning story. When they started out, Thriva offered at-home blood test kits. But what they really wanted to sell was insight. They sensed a much bigger audience out there: ‘health optimisers’ craving a better understanding of their body. We helped them reposition with a simple idea for that audience: “Listen to your blood”.

From our work with Thriva.

Clear ideas last years

Changing with the wind isn’t a good strategy for brand positioning. It pays to commit to deep ideas you can stick with long term.

SURI make sleek, sustainable electric toothbrushes. We’ve helped them own the idea of ‘beautiful’ in different ways. First as the beautiful solution to an ugly problem: 4 billion plastic brushes thrown away each year. Second, as a desirable object that always shows up elegantly. And third, by association with that most sacred time of day: morning.