The Inside Story of Our Brand Refresh Journey at Done By Nine

As we all evolve, businesses need to refresh their image, keep up with trends, and ensure they’re resonating with their audience. But refreshing and rebranding your business isn’t just a switch you flip on overnight. It’s a journey, it’s a transformation, and it comes with a lot of different challenges. On today’s podcast, we’re going to pull back the curtain on our brand refresh process at Done By Nine, from the why to the how, and even the importance, should we be even doing this question. And whether you’re a business looking to revamp your brand or just curious about the process, this is going to be your backstage pass into the ins and outs of rebranding and refreshing your brand.

Hi, welcome to the Marketing Mindset podcast. My name is Jordan McFadyen, and this podcast is designed to help you navigate the cluttered world of marketing and challenge you to move away from random acts of marketing towards planning intentional marketing strategy.

And the main topic of today’s podcast is focusing on rebrands and refreshing your brand, as it is a bit of a big day in the world of our marketing company of Done By Nine, as today we’ve just launched our rebranded, refreshed new look. So today what we want to do is we want to have a look at why we’ve decided to make the change and also have a look at why companies generally consider having refreshes and rebrands in general. And also some of the things that you need to actually understand before you take a project like this on, based on some of the learnings that we’ve had over the past 12 months during this process.

So that first question is, why rebrand in the first place? And there are a few reasons why a company may decide to undertake a rebrand at any one point. Firstly, let’s, I don’t know, imagine your company’s like a person. Over time, as people, we’ll potentially change our styles, our interests, or even our haircuts to keep up with times and trends. And I guess that’s just one way of thinking about why a brand may want to have a rebrand or a refresh, as it can apply the same with an actual company as well, because you do need to keep up with the times and keep up with the latest trends, especially depending on the industry that you’re actually working in.

Also, your company’s image can become quite outdated, I guess. And so a refresh or a full-on rebrand is really like that makeover to make sure that you as a business and as a brand stay relevant to your audience. Companies can also target a new group of customers as they evolve over time as well. Maybe as a business, you’re starting to enter into a new market or even offering different services in general. And a rebrand or a refresh of your brand in that respect is really a way for you to kind of say, hey, this is who we are now.

As companies innovate and grow, their brand must always evolve along with it. And so a rebrand can really effect these changes and signify that the company is actually progressing and keeping relevant in a changing industry and a changing market as well.

But in saying this, not all companies should rebrand. I think that’s something really clear that we need to get across today, is it can actually, firstly, be quite a costly process. It’s also really time-consuming. We can say that. And you may also be a really well-established business already with a really strong brand and really strong brand recognition within your audience already. And simply adding a rebrand to that mix, or even a refresh to that mix, could actually confuse that recognition of your brand as well. So it’s not for every business at the end of the day as well.

Plus, if you’ve done this before and you have rebranded your current business, then I would also say to reconsider. Because the other thing I think that you’d need to think about is not rebranding too often, as that would, I would think, start to give the feelings of a brand being a bit indecisive or unreliable at times as well.

So what I’ll do first is I’ll kind of just explain some of the reasoning behind why we decided to rebrand at Done By Nine. Our core mission was really to ensure that we’re a marketing company that continues to move with industry evolutions. And this mission itself actually challenged us to go back and strengthen our collective purpose and mission and values, along with a shift in how we’re actually working and delivering the best marketing strategies for our clients as well.

We’re finding in the market and from the research that we’ve done that businesses are seeking so much more clarity with their marketing in an industry that’s so often cluttered with so much noise. And that’s also a reason why we run this podcast as well. And part of the intro of this podcast talks around how we can try and break through that clutter, because there is so much noise out there in the marketplace around marketing in general.

And with Done By Nine, our vision is really to provide businesses with clarity through that clutter that we see. And we do this by providing industry-leading marketing strategies and creative solutions as well. And what we’ve done over this process is we’ve created a refreshed brand which more accurately essentially represents the company that we’ve grown into over the past three years since we started. But it was also really important for us at the same time to really give a nod to the growth that we’ve had in our history as well. So really taking a look back and seeing what we have done and making sure that’s reflected in this refreshed brand as well.

So what I wanted to cover as well is just a few points to consider before undertaking a rebrand in general. Because obviously as part of this process, we’ve learned a lot. We’ve made a few mistakes along the way, but we’re really happy with where we’re at now with the refreshed brand. So for this process for us, it started around a year ago. That was around the time that we knew that we needed to make a shift and shift the trajectory of the company and the business in general. And so for us, it really started with doing a bit of fundamental research. And I would implore you to do the same, as to really research the market and really do that thinking before you even consider rolling out a plan like this.

When we think about research, understanding your audience is obviously one of those critical things. And I know I speak about this a lot on the podcast. However, that is one of those core things that you need to always go back to. Think about that audience and think about how your brand resonates with that audience. Consider their needs, their desires, their perceptions of your current brand.

And for us, what this was, this process started with an interview process and a survey with our current clients. We actually literally sat down and interviewed some of our core clients. We surveyed a lot of our clients. We surveyed past clients that we had stopped working with. We even reached out to unrealised clients. So clients that we’d pitched to work together and it didn’t work out for any one reason or the other. So we even surveyed those people to try and get an understanding about how they resonated and how they saw our brand.

And also we took this as an opportunity to speak to clients that we’d love the opportunity to work with in the future, including some pretty epic New Zealand and Australian brands as well. So that was that core part for us, as part of that research phase, was really sitting down and actually surveying and interviewing all those people and getting a true understanding about their perceptions of our brand now. And seeing whether that’s actually what we were trying to intend of getting across.

And alongside this, I’d also say that I’d recommend you should also do research on your competitors. Have a look at things like the market trends and the overall industry landscape. Are there big changes happening in the industry? How are the trends kind of looking? And I guess for us, looking in the digital marketing space, there’s a lot happening in digital marketing, obviously with AI coming in. So it’s about how we can make sure that our brand and our business stays ahead of all of that, and make sure they’re actually moving with those industry evolutions as well.

And all that research is really going to help shape your rebranding strategy, but it’s also going to help ensure that the rebrand and the refresh is actually based on factual data instead of just going on a gut feeling. So that was part of that research phase, which I think was critical.

We also undertook a re-evaluation of literally looking right back at our core values and our mission. We enlisted the help of a specialist who actually came and worked with us on this project. Hayden, he’s even appeared on this podcast as well. And we sat down with Hayden and we worked through our core values and our mission to ensure that the rebrand aligned really with the core values and the mission that we actually have as a company, and also just had a look at the business’s core values and mission in general as well, just to see whether they should also evolve alongside this refresh and this process that we’ve undertaken.

And then the other big consideration for us was consistency. Consistency is a massive consideration that I would implore you to have a think about if you’re thinking of going down this same journey. We’ve been only in business for three years, which in hindsight doesn’t seem like a long time. However, when we actually started to create that list of assets that we have in the marketplace, it’s an amazingly long list of assets that we have out there that is going to be required to be updated across this entire different landscape.

So I think that’s the other thing that you just need to think about, is how long have you been in business for? How large is that online footprint that you have? Do you have logos everywhere, or do you have a pretty succinct idea about where your brand currently features? And honestly, don’t overlook this, because if you are going to do a refresh of your brand or a rebrand entirely, you want to be able to do it consistently. You want to try and minimise the amount of old logos or old branding that’s out in the marketplace.

And sure, we’re only human. We’re going to miss a few bits here and there. But I’ll just recommend making sure you actually go through. Check all those different channels and those touch points. It’s really imperative and it does take a lot of time. And create that checklist and make sure you go through that checklist on the day.

The other thing that we’ve done, and I’d suggest for you to consider as well, is just keeping existing customers in the loop with what we’re actually doing as well. Because a significant change in a brand or a business can be a bit jarring for some of the loyal customers, who may think that there might be some hidden things that are coming up next. So what we’ve tried to do is we’ve included a lot of our customers and clients throughout this process.

So this goes back to even a year ago, where we started with the interview process and the survey process, where we started to tell our clients about how we were moving as a business and what the next step was with us as a business, and how we were adapting to changes and being able to provide a better service for our clients. So that was the first kind of piece that we’re going to put into our clients, is around what we were doing and kind of our business growth in the background.

And then the days before the rebrand, we also reached out to the clients individually, and again, it’s just that reassurance, explaining why the change is actually beneficial to them and to us as a business. How it’s actually going to affect them, and if it’s going to affect them at all. How it’s still going to align with your brand and the service that they’ve actually grown to love and trust at the end of the day as well.

So I think that’s really important, is that communication piece, that change management piece, just making sure that clients are fully understanding about what’s actually happening and some of the motives behind that refresh and that rebrand, just to make sure that they don’t get a jarring shock.

And finally, I think the thing that I’d implore you to really have a bit of a think about is the execution plan. As a marketing company ourselves, we’ve been really fortunate, to be fair, to have supported many businesses through a rebrand process, and this is all different types of rebrands as well. This is going from just changing a visual identity, changing a website, to the colour palette and things like that, to full rebrands of even changing the business name and even changing the service offering as well.

So everything in between is, we’ve been able to take a lot of those learnings to apply to our own refresh as well. But that execution plan really is crucial. You need to think about how you’re actually going to launch the refresh, the rebrand in general. How are you going to communicate that to your audience and to your clients and to your customers, and think about all those communication pieces.

For us as well, even the recording of this podcast today and the accompanying blog posts that we’ll get on our website as well, those are actually key pieces of our communication plan that we had set out as well. We’ve recorded a separate video to this as well that explains our change. It talks about why we’ve made the change and some of the reasons behind it. We’ve planned our social media schedule, which slowly introduces the brand to our audience, and it affirms again why we’ve taken these steps to rebrand and to refresh in the first place. So I think the communication plan and the execution of the refresh process is obviously really important at the end of the day as well.

So answering a lot of questions that we have as well, if we have a look from our perspective with Done By Nine, I guess, what did we change? I’ve spoken about the fact that we’ve had clients that have changed everything from service offering to names and to colour palettes and everything. But for us, what ended up actually changing it, we’ve grown from a single freelancer, myself, to now being able to actually having a team of highly skilled professionals, really.

And we’ve established ourselves in a market where we do our best work, and evolve how we function and how we work really to function at our best for our clients as well. So we’ve really grown over those last three years, and as we move forward toward our company mission, which is to help businesses focus on strategy and moving away from random acts of marketing towards intentional marketing that moves with industry evolutions, it really helps us dictate how we show up in the market, and that’s considering things like our branding, our tone of voice, how we communicate what we do best. And so the natural next step for us in our evolution of the business was to have this refresh and this rebrand to kind of keep up with all of that thinking as well.

I want to just touch on the visual identity. Now, I’m no designer or anything like that, but part of this rebrand for us was also having a bit of a look at the introduction of a new logo, which can really be an essential decision to make and an important part of an overall marketing strategy as well. But it is a big decision as well about actually having that visual identity.

And for us, a well-designed logo should be simple. It needs to be memorable. It needs to be timeless. Think about, is it still going to be effective in 10 years’ time, for example? The visual identity really needs to be unique to you as well. Make sure you try and have a visual identity that stands out in the crowd.

For me, I always try and like to think about it around, let’s say we’re going to sponsor an event or your logo is going to be sitting beside a lot of other different logos and different symbols. I always try and think about how is ours going to appear next to all of those other businesses, whether they’re competitors or not. How are they going to appear? And is it going to appear intriguing? Is it going to stand out? Is it going to convey who you are and what you do? And really having to think about that design and whether it’s even relevant to your audience or pertinent to the company in general or the service that you provide.

And thinking also, is there a bit of a story that even works with the logo as well? Our new brand identity that we’ve created is really a bit of a nod to some of the beginnings of Done By Nine and also a nod to the mission that we’re on as a company. I believe that we’ve created an identity that’s really visually communicating who we are and what we do and the journey that we’re actually undertaking with our clients.

And even if you look at our logo marks, I just want to use ours as a bit of an example. It’s made up of two main elements, and this is the type of thinking that you should be putting into your logo marks and your visual identities as well.

So that first piece of our logo mark that I wanted to focus on was the beginning. The beginning really is visually represented by that outer shape of our logo mark, and it forms that cuboid shape of the shipping container, which is where our office is based. And it’s a bit of a nod to our history, and it’ll always kind of represent kind of where we started and where we kind of kicked off.

After a year of remote working from cafes and things like that, we truly found our home when we moved into this head office. And since then, it’s really been that catalyst and that kind of opening for us to kind of build that full marketing team that we have now. It’s helped us gain things like an international client base. We’ve begun leading some ambitious businesses towards their marketing goals as well. So I think that outward part of our logo mark really represents that as well.

And then with the core as well, and this is visually represented of the inner core square within that outward cuboid shape. Obviously, it’s hard for me to describe this on a podcast, but you can have a look on our website or any of our social media to see what I’m kind of describing here. But you’ll see there’s a core part to the logo as well. And as we focus on strategy, that’s kind of like our core of our business, moving businesses away from random acts of marketing towards intentional marketing.

And so we, again, as I said at the top of this podcast, our main mission is really to provide clarity amidst all that clutter that’s out in the marketplace as well. And for our logo, we wanted the logo to kind of represent that core of what we actually do. And then it wouldn’t be Done By Nine without having a little bit of fun along the way as well. So Renee, who put the logo together for us, also managed to sneak in six of the letters that make up Done By Nine as well within that logo mark. So you can have a bit of fun and try to work that out as well.

But hopefully that gives you a little bit of context around our logo mark and also some of the thinking that you could be putting into your own logo if you are going down this similar path as well.

And look, the last thing I just wanted to touch on as well is with a refresh or a rebrand, it can be a scary process. But I think also we need to think of it as a bit of a celebration of change really, and of evolution and of growth. So at Done By Nine, using this rebrand as an opportunity to really celebrate the growth and the evolution of our business in general.

I’ve said it a few times already on this podcast, but the team and the skills and our expertise have grown immensely over the last three years. And even the community of businesses that we’ve worked with are constantly growing and expanding. And this rebrand really was an opportunity for us to celebrate where we’ve been. It’s to celebrate the growth that we’ve been able to achieve as an entire team. And also, it’s been a great opportunity for us to refocus on our mission for the future as well.

And I’ve spoken about this on past episodes when we’ve spoken a bit about our strategy. We’ve used this as an opportunity to sit down as a team and refocus on our mission and spend some good team days together. Trying to all get aligned with this new brand and, again, just celebrate the change that we’re kind of going through.

And look, if you’re considering a rebrand or you’re thinking it’s potentially on the cards soon, honestly, the biggest piece of advice I could give is the planning should really be starting now. As mentioned at the top of the podcast, we have supported numerous brands, luckily for us, with their rebranding or refresh strategy. So we were in a lucky position, but it can take a lot of time. It takes a lot of expertise. It can be costly as well.

And look, if you’re looking for any advice or support, you can head along to our brand spanking new website now and have a look at more about what we do and some of the other brands that we’ve worked with as well. If you do want some advice around how to refresh, or if you have rebranded recently and you need to get that onto a marketing strategy, you can go along to our website, donebynine.com, and check out all our previous work on there.

If you want to feature any tips on improving your branding so you can actually give your team better direction on where you need to head. Any podcast topic ideas as well, email them through to me, jordan@donebynine.com. And as always, if you’ve enjoyed the podcast, please do consider giving us a little star rating, or potentially hitting that follow button would be really appreciated, as it’s a great way to support us in making more content for you as well.

But hopefully it’s given you a little bit to consider if you are potentially going down that refresh or that rebrand journey. And if you are, all the best. If you need any advice, head along to our website, donebynine.com. And we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Marketing Mindset podcast next Thursday.