​This is a perennial—and paradoxical—challenge. If you don’t update your brand after too long a period of time, it will look and feel stale.
 
Yet when you update it, you risk diluting it and squandering all of the brand impressions you’ve worked so hard to build. 
 
So what do you do? Is there a happy medium, a bright shining line to follow? 
 
In this article, we’ll give you some pointers, some do’s and don’ts, and a little experience of ours based on a recent client assignment. 
 
Let’s start with that last part, first. 
 
Re-Branding 101
 
For this client assignment (and remember, we’re always fuzzing the details to add anonymity), our client wanted to create a new “2.0” version of one of their signature branded products, which had been well established, and received, in the marketplace over the past five years. 
 
So why the update? 
 
Good question. You don’t just do these things for light or transient reasons. In the case of our client, they had made significant revisions to the product itself, to the point where it warranted a new release and brand update. 
 
So the rationale was there. That’s good. 
 
(If it’s not, push back. Simply updating for the sake of updating is a mark of, well, fashion, and that’s a whole different planet from what we’re discussing here.) 
 
A good question to ask at this time: Has the audience changed? The brand, really, is for them to consume. 
 
In our client’s case, the answer was, “Not too much.” 
 
Which let us turn, rather organically, to the mandatories which would remain. In this situation, we were locked in to the client’s color palette. They had a certain bold approach that served them well and reflected their brand identity. And they had a few little visual elements that needed to carry over, in the whole branding picture. 
 
All in all, this is a very good, solid re-branding assignment. 
 
So what did we do? Well, we listed out what needed to stay (the aforementioned mandatories) and what should get updated. We got the client’s blessing on this two-column list. 
 
Then we made some quick thumbnails—nothing too detailed, mind you—of how this new branding might be visualized. We then turned these over to the talented graphic artist we were working with on this account, and let her do her thing. 
 
Narrowing the field
 
Our designer wowed us with lots of great options. As we had hoped, she took the ideas from the thumbnails, and then really ran with them. In lots of creative directions. They were just enough to get her going in the proper direction, while letting her creativity shine. 
 
We’re happy to report that our client had a hard time choosing. The classic “embarrassment of riches” situation. That’s as good as you can hope for. 
 
Eventually, our client chose their favorite. This then went through several rounds of tweaking revisions. And the end result was strong. The client was happy. And so were we. 
 
There was a story, a number of years ago, about the then-latest Pepsi re-brand. It was, in short, a disaster. The design firm issued something like a 40-page white paper explaining why the new logo was supposedly so great. (Not to mention expensive!) 
 
Fast-forward to today, and that re-brand is history. The newer logo is better. It respects its heritage. And it’s instantly grasp-able. 
 
Those are the do’s. The don’ts? Man, if you need to write a white paper to try and justify your brilliance to your client, start over. 
 
Need help with a re-branding initiative? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help! 

​We were recently tasked with writing some marketing copy for a B2B client of ours, utilizing real-life success stories from their client files. The goal, not surprisingly, was to lure other prospects into becoming clients, too, when they read about these great successes. 
 
This is so straightforward that it’s boring. Right? 
 
Nope. It warrants an entire article. 
 
Who wants what? 
 
Granted, we need to cloak this story in anonymity—just as we’d needed to cloak this assignment in anonymity. We couldn’t tell the world, for example, that our client’s specific client suffered from broken systems, couldn’t serve their customers, and so on. 
 
Similarly, you don’t want to get too deep in the weeds on the technical side. And herein lies the gist of this story, and its lesson. 
 
Let’s get specific. For our client’s client—the one in the success story—they’d used Systems A, B, and C to do their work. They had problems with Systems A, B, and C, which our client helped them solve. 
 
So we could have been very specific, in calling out Systems A, B, and C by name, even when we never mentioned who-the-client-was, by name. 
 
That would have been accurate. It wouldn’t have gotten anyone into trouble. And, on the surface, it seemed to be the thrust of this assignment. 
 
But you’ve got to take a customer-back approach here. (Yes, you can make a drinking game out of how many times we say “customer-back approach” here at Copel Communications.)
 
Here’s the rub: The goal here, if you really look at it, is not to explain how the client in the success story succeeded.
 
It’s not? 
 
Nope. 
 
The goal, rather, is to tell a prospective client how they could succeed.
 
Aha. That’s different. 
 
Which gets back to Systems A, B, and C. In this world in which our client competes, there’s a lot more than Systems A, B, and C for their clients and their prospects. There are systems which compete with Systems A, B, and C. 
 
Put it this way: You don’t want to turn off a prospect just because they’ve opted to use System D. 
 
Get it? 
 
This gets back to the marketing challenge. It’s subtle, yet important. For this assignment, we didn’t want to call out Systems A, B, and C by name… but rather by function. We wanted to create blanket terms for them, for the exact reason of not alienating a prospect who uses System D. 
 
So instead of saying “We helped our client with System A,” we said “We helped our client with their transactional reporting platform” (or whatever). This way, whether you use System A or System D for transactional reporting, you both perceive the value of what the company does. 
 
As we’d said, this is a subtle difference—the matter of just a few words here and there—but it really makes the difference between attracting the prospects you want, or having them self-select elsewhere. 
 
Remember: This distinction was not spelled out to us in our marching orders. It was incumbent on us to read between the lines, to take that customer-back approach, and do the right thing by our client. 
 
Need help with a similar under-the-radar marketing challenge? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help!