The Freedom to Evolve as a Brand

It’s like a constant one-step forward, two-steps back.

You have a big vision for the business, you hire a brand strategist, you invest a lot of resources into the collaboration, and then you implement the brand strategy and action plans.

And then you start to grow, you achieve your goals one at a time, and suddenly… it’s like you’re back to square one.

Like you need to redo the same cycle to break through the stagnancy and reach new heights.

It’s like you need another rebrand.

Have you ever wondered if you have failed because you keep having to change, adapt, and experiment?

If you need a rebrand, does that mean your brand strategy was a failure?

What if you’ll always need a rebrand?

What if the concept of “rebrand” gets a bad rep, like wanting to do a rebrand means what you’ve been doing has failed, when in reality it’s just a part of the journey?

That’s a thought that I’ve been pondering about lately.

I kept encountering creatives and entrepreneurs who says they want to refresh their services, redo their website, or rebrand their entire business.

And it’s not just them. Even I would look at my own stuff — things that I felt so connected with 3-4 years ago — and only end up feeling dissatisfied with what I have now and the strong need to re-strategize and realign my goals.

The thing is, they’d say the same things after a few years down the road. I’d say the same things, to the point that it’s not a surprise anymore. It almost feels normal to want to update and redo things.

So, if we invested a lot of money for our brand strategy, and then years down the road we decided to switch gears and redo that brand strategy, does that mean the whole journey was a failure and we had to start from scratch?

No, needing a rebrand doesn’t mean your brand strategy failed

It just proves that you and the brand have evolved.

Growth means change. Experience means transformation.

Who you were 5 years ago when you started your brand and business might not be who you are anymore—in the best way possible. The dreams you had about your organization might not be the same anymore because your perspective have widened, you’ve seen bigger possibilities.

You might have embarked on this journey with Plan A in mind, not knowing that it will lead you to a completely target market than what you’ve imagined. So when you evaluate your brand and business and think to yourself, ‘I think it’s time for a rebrand’ - this doesn’t mean your strategy has failed. It just means you’re closing one season in your brand and you’re ready to open a new one.

Starting a brand with 10 customer interviews and building a messaging out of that can get you so far. It’s no surprise for you to rethink of a new direction when you have access to 500 customer insights that reveal a deeper need than what you’ve uncovered at the beginning of your journey.

It’s an evolution, it’s dynamic, it’s ever-changing. I think that’s the beauty of building brands and growing a business.

See your brand strategy and roadmap as a playbook, not a set of rigid rules and framework

The journey of growing a brand in the market is like exploring a new park in the neighborhood. You can observe photos from it to get a feel of what it looks like and what it has to offer. You can even ask people about their experience—the way you would ask your audience to get customer insights to develop your strategy.

But at the end of the day, no matter how well you plan your visit and carefully calculate all the risks, you still have to go to the park physically and experience being there to know how you’d have the most fun in it.

Building and growing a brand is also a journey of experimenting and exploring ideas.

It’s good to have a map and a plan to start with, but the only way for you to truly know what works and what doesn’t is to try them out. To actually step into the market, launch the brand, connect with clients, and evaluate from there.

If you see building a brand as a journey of endless learning and discovering, then you are free to change and adapt as you go

I get it, it feels kind of scary because that means there’s so much unknown, almost zero certainty to where the brand will end up. But when you know you are free to pivot and play with your different ideas, every challenge becomes another playground to try strategies and tools.

You keep certain things as your foundation—such as your ‘Why’—but allow yourself to grow the brand in a way that brings together, your vision, your products/services, and your clients’ needs. And when one strategy seems to miss the mark, you have the space to step back, reflect, and play again.

It’s never a dead-end.