Refreshing an established brand

Your business may have changed more than your brand suggests. Updating how you look and sound means deciding what to keep, what to change and how to make the refreshed identity work everywhere customers meet you.

A brand refresh needs a clear direction and a system people can use

Refreshing an established brand involves more than changing its appearance. The task is to make its identity reflect the business's direction while retaining a character people can recognise. That is difficult when the brand must speak to different audiences and work across many channels. Start by listening to employees and stakeholders, examining competitors and clarifying what the business wants to be known for. Then connect messaging and visual design around that direction. Testing the identity through a website and giving colleagues practical assets helps turn a creative idea into a usable system.

For Wates, The Frameworks built a messaging framework around three ideas that supported its brand purpose, with copy that could adapt to different audiences. A refreshed visual identity combined reportage photography with a new illustration style. Wates credited the work with bringing consistency to its story across the business while keeping it authentic and recognisably its own.

For 2X, the refresh supported its ambition to become the revenue marketing resource centre for B2B businesses. The Frameworks listened to employees and stakeholders and examined competitors before developing the identity. Messaging shifted from cost-saving to business-building, while the website was restructured around audience needs and storytelling centred on CMOs. Employee playbooks and social templates extended the identity into everyday use, creating a system designed to scale with the business.

Sources: Wates: Reimagining a Brand with Purpose, The 2X Effect: A Brand for Marketing’s Next Power Move

How The Frameworks helps

Refreshing your established brand

You need an established brand that reflects your business today while retaining the recognition and character that still matter. The Frameworks grounds the refresh in evidence about your existing brand, drawing on stakeholder perspectives, audience research, competitive analysis and archival material. It works with you to connect your organisation's changing direction with its established identity, using that understanding to shape positioning and guide how the brand's language and appearance evolve.

The Frameworks delivers messaging that expresses the updated positioning, a visual identity that carries the change across your communications, and websites and implementation assets that put the refreshed brand into use. These give your teams a coherent basis for updating digital experiences, publications, campaigns and other customer touchpoints. You get a brand that better represents the business you have become, with the language, design and practical assets to present it consistently without disconnecting it from its history.

Let’s talk about refreshing your established brand 

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