Have you ever thought about rebranding your company? Or maybe, you are in a situation, like some of our clients, where you have to change your company name in order to secure a trademark. It can be very scary. But it doesn’t have to be. In fact, it can be a great opportunity to be a growth accelerator.
Our guest today is Jim Heininger, who shares with us the challenges of rebranding, the steps to rebrand successfully, and the current trends in rebranding.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
Rebranding previously had a lot of fear and trepidation, but it doesn’t have to be scary today.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- You can visit our guest’s website at: https://www.rebrandingexperts.com/
- Connect with our guest on social:
- Twitter: @RebrandExperts
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rebrandingexperts/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebrandingexperts/
- Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimheininger/
- If you are ready to franchise your business or take it to the next level: CLICK HERE.
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Jim Heininger is a leading authority on rebranding. He leads the efforts of The Rebranding Experts team, a firm he founded in 2017, after 30 years of business and branding strategy experience for P&G, McDonald’s and Anheuser-Busch. Rebranding Experts was purposefully designed to be the only agency with the comprehensive services necessary to rebrand organizations. It starts from a fundamentally different view point than traditional branding firms that see rebranding as just a marketing strategy. His team believes rebranding should be a strategic growth accelerator, creating a forward-facing organization ready to grasp new opportunities.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/ or by calling Big Sky Franchise Team at: 855-824-4759.
If you are interested in being a guest on our podcast, please complete this request form or email podcast@bigskyfranchise.com and a team member will be in touch.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:01):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise team, and as we open today, I’m wondering, have you ever thought about rebranding your company or maybe you’re in a situation like some of our clients are where you have to change your company name in order to secure a trademark? It can be very scary, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, it can be a great opportunity to be a growth accelerator. And our guest today is Jim Heininger, who shares with us the challenges of rebranding the steps to successfully rebrand and the current trends in rebranding.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:47):
Now Jim is a leading authority on rebranding and he leads the efforts of the Rebranding Experts team, a firm founded in 2017 after 30 years of business and branding strategy experience for companies such as P&G, McDonald’s and Anheuser-Busch. If you’re curious about rebranding or maybe you’re in that situation where you need to be rebranding your company, you’re going to love this interview, so let’s go ahead and jump right into it.
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (01:12):
I’m Jim Heininger and I am the founder and principal of the Rebranding Experts, which is an agency that focuses on successfully rebranding organizations.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:23):
Great. Well this is exactly why I wanted to have you on the show, is to talk about rebranding and what it is. So just for a starting point, what is rebranding and some of these other buzzwords? When preparing for this, we talked about brand refresh and brand repositioning and rebranding. Maybe help define some of these terms for us.
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (01:45):
Let me start at the bottom of that build and that would be the idea of a brand refresh. A brand is your the heart and soul of your organization. It’s the way you express yourself out to your customer base and your prospects, and sometimes it needs to be updated, it’s old or it’s stale or you got some ambitious growth plans. So the one thing you could do is to refresh that brand, which is basically a physical appearance makeover that’s maybe a new logo, some new color palette that you would reflect in your website and your marketing materials. A brand repositioning is a step up from that and that’s when you need to correct something, that either your business is moving in a different direction than it has in the past, or you’ve got some really ambitious growth plans that enter some new markets and you need to update your positioning to make it more relevant for success in those markets.
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (02:41):
And that would include the physical appearance update, but also some repositioning, a new promise to customers, maybe a little bit of an update of your sales message and so forth. Rebranding would be at the top of that pyramid and that’s when you go through all those steps, but you also change the name of the organization that you put on an entirely new face. You stand up a whole new brand that you’re going to go forward with, one that is much more relevant, much more modern and able to work harder in the marketplace to make you successful because it’s hitting on more pistons than you previously did.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (03:20):
I think of going through each of these steps and a company going through this whole rebranding, what are some challenges they would be going through?
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (03:30):
The first is the decision to do it and really reaching that comfort level that it’s the right thing to do for your business and that there’s a sound business reason for it. We always lead new clients through the development of a rebranding business plan because we want them to have the facts and the figures in front of them that really give them that level of confidence that this is the right thing to do for my organization. I’ll invest what’s needed to make it successful and I’ll be patient through the process because it will take some months to actually make it happen. So that’s the first challenge that we try to get people over.
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (04:09):
Then the second is letting go of the past, and that’s extremely hard for individuals who maybe founded the company in the first place and have a lot of sweat equity invested in and maybe the name that they originally came up with had some personal meaning to them at the time, but it’s not really working anymore and it’s not going to in the future. And so realizing that they’re strong equities in what they had created that we can pull forward into the future, but they’ve got to be able to let go of it and they’ve got to encourage their people, their employees to let go of it as well so that they can embrace something for the future.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (04:49):
Well, that’s an interesting point because in our line of work, it’s not uncommon where we have a client that we’re helping go through the franchising process and their name has not been trademarked up until the point of going through franchising and now the trademark process could take six months, it could take two years, and then they find out that it can’t be trademarked, or maybe a trademark attorney suggests, I don’t know, you might get this, you might not. So you might want to consider a new brand or a new name. How would a scenario like that work where maybe there’s this brand equity tied into this. It sounds a lot like that second scenario you just provided there.
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (05:28):
It would be extremely important for someone if they’re going to be entering into an agreement to franchise their business. That brand has got to be as strong and as solid as it can be, because that’s one of the key determinants in a potential owner for investing in you is not only your concept and your operational support to make it unique, but what the brand is going to do out there. Because eventually as you grow, you’re going to want to be able to collectively advertise and promote that brand. So I would suggest anybody that’s looking at franchising their business to make sure that they stop and that they really firm up that brand tightly because that’s what a good potential owner is going to ask is, let me see your brand, what’s behind this brand? And if that isn’t real crisp and clean and articulated well, and it doesn’t show how it differentiates you in the marketplace, some people may question, is this the right investment?
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (06:29):
So if you haven’t done some of that work, do it now. If you haven’t trademarked, you need to look into that because trademarking is actually becoming one of the biggest challenges when it comes to rebranding. The USPTO, Patent and Trademark Office is the one that if you’re going to be doing business on a national level, on a federal level, you have to secure trademark protection through them. And that process is taking longer and longer than ever before. So it’s sometimes over a year now. You can do a lot of trademark search work to see what’s already there in that kind of name space and to see if it’s potentially challenging to you. You can look at the industries or the categories of service that those brand names are being used, and we always then will use a trademark attorney to give us a level of probability of approval by the USPTO.
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (07:27):
So we put the pressure on them to say, based upon what you see in terms of applications and approvals, how confident are you that this will be approved? So it’s a question to be sure to ask the trademark attorney. If you get up into that 90% percentage, you’re probably in pretty good shape to go ahead and move forward on submitting your application while building out everything you need to surrounding that brand because it’ll just be an affirmation of it when you do get the trademark approval then. That’s a big leap for a lot of business owners to say, I’m going to continue going on down this road and spending the money to build out my brand and be ready to do more with it without that trademark approval. So if there’s a leap of faith that comes with it and there comes an important risk management plan as to if for some reason it’s not approved, what’s your plan B?
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (08:18):
During that rebranding type phase, we talked about some challenges that come along. What are some opportunities that you see some of your clients have gone through or other brands you’ve seen go through this process?
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (08:30):
The rebranding process is a huge aha moment for most business owners and business leaders, because what we do is we take the insights from them, from their customers, from key stakeholders in terms of what their brand represents today and what customers are looking for tomorrow from you. And we roll that into not only a basic positioning statement, but a new brand promise, which is just the three to four key words that express what your brand will deliver to them, what they can expect in a relationship with you. And when clients see that happen, it’s just beautiful because all of a sudden it gives them so much more assurance that there is a better way to position themselves in the marketplace than they’ve been doing today, and that it will open the door for new opportunities for growth to up-level their relationships with customers.
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (09:30):
We have a lot of clients who have long been order takers or delivering products and they want to be more of a consultant to their clients and this all of a sudden they see the ability for this to work harder for them in the marketplace, and it’s a beautiful thing when it happens.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (09:47):
In your experience and opinion in having gone through this process with many clients in other organizations, what have you found that it takes to rebrand successfully, to go through that and come out on the other end where the client’s generally happy and they’re satisfied with what happened?
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (10:05):
Well, it’s a handful of things, and the first is being aspirational. This is your time and your opportunity to really extend your reach and to be much more creative in the way that you position yourselves. It all has to be soundly based, but reach for the sky at this point in time. It’s just because you’re only going to do this hopefully once if ever again, and you want to make sure that you do it right and that you really set your brand up for many, many years to come. Number two is leadership engagement. You’ve got to have your senior people involved in making the decisions about the rebranding process. They have to own it because they are going to turn around. We’re going to ask them to communicate it to their teams and to the full employee base and to customers and stakeholders and so forth. If they don’t believe it, if they’re not bought into it, none of those other audiences are going to follow them. So leadership engagement is number two.
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (11:03):
And then number three is employee base, being prepared and trained and lined up ready to deliver on that new brand when you do launch it. They’ve got to believe it, they have to understand what they need to do differently than they might have in the past to make that brand come alive for customers. And you have to then be able to measure that indeed it is working in the marketplace. So those are four key measures of success.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (11:30):
Thank you for sharing those. And let’s talk a little bit about some of the trends you’re seeing that are going on in the rebranding world and maybe some examples.
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (11:39):
We monitor trends on an annual basis, and some of the ones that we’re seeing right now is there’s a lot of organizations and things that are being pushed to rebrand by external factors. So where we saw what happened in the last several years with the social justice movement and a lot of big name brands, Aunt Jemima, the Washington Redskins and so forth, who smartly made the choice to update their brands relative to the way that they were being perceived in the marketplace. That’s a dynamic which is really, really increasing. It somewhat says be current with the way you’re presenting yourself. Another thing that we’re seeing is there’s this proliferation of what I’m going to call short smartphone names enabled names, and that’s this concentration of your brand into one word. And oftentimes because there are common words that you might have a little trouble trademarking, you’re dropping the vowels or you are doing a funny misspelling of it that looks very modern and so forth.
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (12:44):
We see Lyft, we see Uber. You’re seeing things like Caldwell Bank or real estate just going to CB. So there really, it’s this shortening of the brand name that makes a much more dynamic visual presentation as well too. There are some legal challenges with that. So you have to be super careful and make sure that the trademark attorney is involved in it, that you’re making the right decisions. And then the third thing I would say in terms of a trend is I think the decision to rebrand in the past always was a one filled with anxiety and the business leaders really had to be proven that this was the right thing to do. And there are probably many who backed down from the decision because they were fearful of what the repercussions was or might be.
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (13:30):
Now you’re seeing that fear fading and a lot of organizations saying, Nope, I have to be the steward of my brand and my company, and if this is the right thing to do, let’s do it. If it’s tear up the bandaid or make the right decision, we need to move forward and have a more promising future. So the fear is going down, and that’s because they’re seeing so many rebrands around them and realizing it’s not such a one in one in a million kind of thing that businesses are doing anymore. It’s pretty common.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (14:03):
This is a great time for us, Jim, just to make a little bit of a transition in our show where we ask every guest the same four questions before they go, and the first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey? And something you learned from it.
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (14:19):
So I would think in terms of misses I’ve made in my career, I’m a big believer in trusting your gut and that you will be able to smell out when something isn’t quite right, or it just doesn’t feel comfortable to you. And there are many times in my career that I acted quickly upon that for good results, and there are other times that I didn’t and I continued to feel it and sure enough, it didn’t go in the way I was wanting it to go, or it didn’t turn out to be as promising as I thought. And I would kick myself for saying, come on, you trust your gut, you have in the past, you know it can work. Don’t prolong things any longer than you need to. Go ahead and act quickly and decisively.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (15:02):
How about a make or two in your career that you’d like to share with us?
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (15:07):
So I’ll always say opening my own business. So I had the huge benefit of, I was doing some consulting work out at McDonald’s Corporation. It ended up being what I thought was a six month engagement and it became an eight year relationship. And at one point when I was ready to move from in-house consulting to getting back into the agency world, they said, Jim, we’ll give you business. Go open your own agency because we want access to you and use this as an interesting career step for you. So it was a big leap of faith on my part, but to do it with their express support was phenomenal. I would always say, look for those kind of opportunities because they can take you up many stairs in the route, which we’re all looking for.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (15:56):
Thank you. And how about a multiplier to help multiply maybe yourself personally or professionally that you’ve used?
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (16:04):
So I read everything. I’m a huge consumer of news, of trends, of facts. I really feel it makes you a more interesting person to be with. It gives you more background with which to make the right decisions. You may see examples of decisions being made that don’t appear to be relevant, but they actually are. And it just gives you a lot more confidence in your leading of people, your business decisions, even interesting conversations you’re having with people. So my wife would probably say I read too much, but I’m okay with that.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (16:44):
Well, the final question we ask every guest is, what does success mean to you?
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (16:49):
I have two thoughts on it. The first is, to me, it’s achieving whatever goal I set out in front of me. And oftentimes that’s a business goal or financial goal. But I’m a big believer that we don’t define our success, that others define our success. I can sit in my little bubble and say, good job, Jim. You’re successful. You did this, you did that. But you need others to recognize that success because that’s what helps spread out there in a way that supports you in whatever your chosen business is, because others see it, or they share it and then people come to you because they say, I keep hearing your name or seeing your name, and you clearly have established something that I think is noteworthy here, and I want your expertise in it. So that means you have to foster how other people perceive your success, but at the end of the day, they’re the ones to define it, not ourselves.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (17:47):
Oh, that’s great. Thank you for sharing that. And before we go, is there anything you were maybe hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
Jim Heininger, The Rebranding Experts (17:55):
If your client base and listener base and so forth are folks that are looking at this idea of rebranding, we’ve got a lot of thought leadership and tips and so forth that people can look at to help them better understand what’s involved so that they can say, is this the right decision for me? And actually get over that hurdle of concern about making this leap and give them a little bit more confidence. So I encourage people to take a look at the rebrandingexperts.com. Same thing on all the social platforms. I think you’ll find a lot of helpful information there.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (18:30):
Jim, thank you so much for a fantastic interview and let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is when he talked about some of the challenges related to rebranding, and he said the hardest part of rebranding is just making the decision to do it and letting go of the past because you’ve probably built up a lot of brand equity in your company and the current brand that you have. And oftentimes there’s that big emotional connection that you have to that. Takeaway number two is when he described what successful rebranding looks like. So he said there are four parts. Number one, be aspirational. Number two, make sure that leadership is engaged. Number three, make sure that your employee base is prepared and trained on how to make the brand come alive for customers once it goes live. And number four is to measure it in the marketplace.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (19:28):
Take away number three is when he describes some of the trends that are going on right now with rebranding. One of them being that rebranding has been occurring often recently due to external factors. He said that there’s this new trend with short smartphone enabled names for new company names that are being created. And number three is that leaders are getting more comfortable with making rebranding and making that change. And now it’s time for today’s win-win.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (20:07):
So today’s win-win is something I wanted to focus on because it’s something I’ve worked with a lot of clients with over the years with this rebranding. And as I’ve helped so many clients through this process and our companies help clients go through this, most often when they’ve been forced to rebrand on the other side of that rebranding, the client is so much happier that they did it even though the initial change was very challenging. And so the win-win is when Jim was talking about rebranding previously had a lot of fear and trepidation associated with it, but it doesn’t have to be scary today. It is much more commonplace and having confidence in the opportunity to create an improved connection with your clients through your brand and through this rebranding process. So view it as an opportunity to make that improvement and that’ll be a win for you and for your clients and for your company.
Dr. Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (21:08):
And so that’s the episode today folks, please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise your business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in and we look forward to having you back next week.
