I work for a company in Nigeria. It started off as a web company with its head office in the states. Because the web industry is just picking, my company had to diversify into the advertising industry which is kinda related to web designing. Anyway we are doing a major rebranding for a telecommunications company. we’ve done the pre-launch and launch and are at the post launch stage. in the course of some personal research on what some professionals think about it; they were impressed but want to see if it will effect a change because i was told this isn’t the 1st rebranding exercise they’ve done and the major problem is their services and product. is there anyway my company can influence our client so that the whole marketing communications strategy isn’t a futile effort?

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Jay’s Answer: Your clients are asking for proof that your rebranding will work. The truthful answer is you have no idea.

When re/branding, you are telling your prospective customers a message and hoping that they will purchase your product/services. The reaction of your market is complex: based on the copy, the placement of the message, the history of the company, the visual, the offer, the prospect’s “experience” communicating with the company, repetitions, and luck (sometimes the right message gets in front of the right eyes for random reasons).

If your company has a history of other successful work, then they will help build your credibility. Better yet, if you have statistics showing that your recommended colors, graphics, copy, (etc.) produced measurable benefit, even better.

How you can best serve your client is to provide tracking to all of your rebranding efforts. How did people find out about the product/service? What message resonated best? What web pages were the most effective?

Another idea is instead of providing a full rebranding effort, start small and test. Show that your first action produced measurable results, and continue to evolve. You can always focus test, but the best results are always real-world. Split test your copy/website/ads.

Show your client that you’re willing to do what it takes to make them successful.

If the problem is that the client’s product/services aren’t so good, then you have other issues:

• You can tell your client the truth, that unless they change their business nothing they say will really matter (and each time they rebrand fewer and fewer people will believe them). This will keep your integrity high, but might lose you an important client.
• You can help your client to improve their product, so it’s more than words. You might need to bring in a business consultant to help them understand where there problems are. This will keep your client, and help them to improve.
• You can do nothing, and take the money, and watch the company continue to do poorly. This will keep a client, but won’t help your portfolio.
• You could commission a survey to uncover public perception, and present it to the company. This will be impartial information that will help them to fine tune both their actions and your rebranding effort.