Who should we speak to before changing our brand?

A useful consultation before you revise a brand begins when you talk with employees at every level, from operational and customer-service roles to senior leadership, across relevant markets and business units, to identify where messaging, visual identity and customer touchpoint consistency break down in practice.

Ask employees where they see opportunities and challenges, what qualities the organisation should be known for, what makes them proud of their work and what they know about customer pain points. Customer-facing teams are particularly important because they encounter the gap between the intended brand platform and the experience customers receive. Bring the findings back to the leadership team, agree the direction, and use the shared understanding to create a creative brief. This makes brand architecture and corporate identity decisions more connected to the realities of the organisation.

Employee-facing brand materials should explain why the new identity exists, what it will help the organisation achieve and how employees should use it in their own work. A launch that only supplies marketing materials can leave designers, digital teams and customer-facing colleagues unable to apply brand standards in the places where customers actually experience the organisation.

Give implementation teams the assets and guidance needed for existing products, digital experiences, internal communications and local applications. Coordinated launch materials can include practical items such as business cards, launch packs and workplace applications, while visual content can draw on real employees and locations where that reflects the organisation. Consistent design principles and clear guidelines help prevent local variations from making related businesses look disconnected. Employee involvement during development also creates space to address concerns before the new identity is introduced.

We believe a corporate identity becomes credible when employees can recognise themselves in it and apply it confidently. We start with research that includes people across the organisation, from frontline roles to leadership, using their views on opportunities, challenges, pride and customer needs to inform the creative brief. For Price Forbes, we involved employees in research during a consolidation rebrand and developed materials that explained the approach and their role in the brand's future. For First Names Group, we interviewed employees and stakeholders, then built the visual language around every employee's first name and launched the new identity across locations at the same time. For Yokogawa Test & Measurement, we positioned the refreshed brand around its people, The Precision Makers.