5 unconventional ways to get fresh ideas for your rebrand
If you’re a small business owner, solopreneur, or somewhere in between, and ready to shake things up with your brand and business, this one’s for you. Whether you started five months or five years ago, a rebrand can be the difference between your business sinking or swimming. And the right brand pivot can mean stagnating or scaling to the next level. Read through for five unconventional ways to get fresh ideas for your rebrand.
Do some experimental marketing.
We’ll start off with the longest and maybe the toughest thing on the list: experimental market research. You can conduct one entirely online or in person, or both. We did both.
Doing market research allows you to get a real sense of the industry you are in and your place in it. It places your business amongst competitors, allowing you to create strong SWOT and Competitive Analyses later on.
Research and analysis are the two things we can’t hide from when it comes to branding and business development, so it’s a good idea to start there. We did our own unconventional experiment to see whether traditional or digital marketing would be more effective for us.
2. Rediscover your brand story through introspection.
So, after the hard work of market research or experimental marketing, you’re ready to discover or reconnect with your brand story. Go back to the drawing board with this one. Do some introspection here. Have those difficult conversations with your business partners who support your entrepreneurial journey.
Think and ask yourself why you wanted to start your business in the first place, and why continuing is important to you. Pick up and read Simon Sinek’s Start With Why if you have to. The point here is to find or rediscover your why.
When we did our rebrand project, we rediscovered that food production was our why. However, for some entrepreneurs and business owners, the rebranding process might reveal that they never started with their true brand story in the first place. In this case, you’d be discovering your why for the first time. There is no right or wrong way; there is just doing the work to craft your brand story.
3. Step outside your comfort zone and outside the box.
A little discomfort will not break, we promise. Step away from your industry and explore others. Go and explore events in sectors outside of your own.
If you’re a vegan food shop owner, visit a Halal butcher store and learn why they butcher their meat the way they do. You might get a renewed insight into why veganism is important to you and your customers. You might get inspiration for vegan recipes.
Apart from visiting businesses outside your industry, go to events outside your comfort zone. This might mean working up the courage to network in person.
4. Spend time outdoors.
This one is our favorite because it’s the one thing that aligned us to our core as food lovers, designers, and business owners.
Nothing beats the clarity and courage you get from spending time in nature. Leave all your laptops at home and take a notebook and your phone. Only use your phone to record some footage. For maximum effect, go to a place where you’ll lose cell connection. We went to Lower Lewis River Falls.
The waterfall hike, campfire cooking, and sitting in the forest for hours made us reconnect to our passion for food production. It wasn’t just that we were cooking, it was how and where.
Cooking out in nature reminded us of farm life. The two rebellious farm kids’ tendencies we tried to “outgrow” suddenly came flooding back. We felt alive again. Our reason for existing as a business became clear. We went home and started experimenting with different media.
One picture we took that weekend became the inspiration for our brand colors. This camping trip solidified our brand pivot and inspired our rebrand.
5. Experiment with different media.
To experiment with different media, you need to give yourself permission to play. Go to your local thrift store and collect as many art supplies as possible. Go home, cook your favorite meal, put your favorite record on, and get artsy fartsy. No, seriously, do it.
The point of this exercise is to get your creative juices flowing so you can imagine the visions you truly want for your brand. When you’re not researching, planning, or doing hard introspection, you can relax and imagine the dream version of your business.
More than anything, you can do this exercise uninhibited, especially after you’ve already done your market research and experiments. Work first, play second. But remember, both are important to get fresh ideas for your business.
Let’s build your Squarespace website.
We’ve been designing websites on Squarespace since 2018 and we’ve been cooking, gardening and raising farm animals since we were kids. It took us a year of experimenting with different media, researching, exploring nature, stepping outside of our comfort zone, and doing some introspection to rediscover our reason for existing as Morse Creatives.
We know you can have a similar year. And whwn you’re ready, we’ll be here to create the website you dreamt of. We’ll craft the marketing campaign you envision.
And if you’re at the end of your rebrand, let’s get started designing right away. Complete a client form to get started.
