A decade working with luxury and wellness brands pays off for the Big Bang rebrand
Background
Hi, I’m Kim for those of you who haven’t seen me on a customer success story call, working with our partners, or even moderating a webinar. I’m a native Montrealer who has had the opportunity to live in Madrid and New York and work at branding/web/MARCOM agencies in Montreal, Toronto, and New York as an account manager and strategist. When I joined Big Bang ERP, I never had the intention to touch any of the brands for “at least five years.” I knew the guidelines that I would share with clients:
- Your purpose never changes. (We formalized Big Bang’s purpose of “creating tangible value” months after I joined the team.)
- Your vision lasts about ten years.
- Your mission statement lasts about five years.
- Your website, based on requirements, last about every three years
- Your brand should NEVER be touched – unless you HAVE to… and we did.
Dropping the ERP off of the Big Bang name seems relatively easy, but it’s a lot more complicated. The question then became, do we do it? When? And why?
Now, after four years at Big Bang (which is in its 6th year of operations), we embarked on the creation of our third website to date. We decided it was time to have our brand match the reality of what we were offering to our dedicated customers – so much more than simply ERP products and services. Today, we provide management consulting, a full portfolio of products, and proprietary methodologies to align goals with investment and maximize success. Things had certainly changed.
Tiggers That It’s Time to Rebrand
Below is a mix of triggers that pushed Big Bang to make the change, plus triggers that I have seen my customers experience in the past. For each company, each trigger’s value is as unique as your business and this list should serve as a guideline, not a recipe.
1. Your name is limiting your product or service offering – as mentioned, being tied to “ERP” was great in our infancy when we wanted to signal our financial-first mindset and positioning. But now, with over 100 employees and 500 customers worldwide, we can offer so much more (including other business systems) – and we are proud to do it.
2. Your customers refer to you by another name. Even before the rebrand, our customers all called us Big Bang. There are also internal reports named “Big Bang” created by our customers.
3. Third-party evaluations show inconsistencies between what you say you are vs. what is reported by the team members and customers
4. Looking for a new image or targeting a different (not additional) segment in the market.
5. Your brand name has become offensive in the evolving social landscape.
6. You are expanding internationally, and new markets cannot easily pronounce or recall the brand name when triggered.
7. Explaining your positioning and values cannot be summarized in a 30-second elevator pitch.
8. Inconsistencies are plentiful.
9. Your company URL ends with something silly that does not help with SEO. For a moment in our rebrand, we were so focused on getting the url “bigbang” that we almost went with the “.co” extension. Many believe this means “company” when in fact it stands for “Columbia” – you simply cannot WIN the SEO game with a country-specific URL unless you are trying to WIN in that country alone.
Another time you may experience a punctual rebrand is when a company is acquired (but that’s a blog for another day).
If you have questions about your business strategy, I am happy to provide advice within Big Bang PLAN. Drop me an email, and we can share a coffee over Zoom!
