By Ian Poysden

 

I have always followed the adage of ‘horses for courses’ in my business life. Wherever possible I look to engage with professionals within their respective fields.

Trying to do everything yourself is a false economy and often leads to things taking longer, at greater costs and with the danger of a less-than ideal outcome. The rebrand and change of our company name to IEP Financial Limited was no different. After giving the project a great deal of thought, the following five areas would be the ones I would urge people to consider when rebranding. Plan ahead. In business I have learnt that wherever possible you need to plan ahead as far as possible. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. IEP opened for business on January 2, but the project plan was formalised eight months earlier in May 2012. A 25 page document with a list of all the jobs to be done, by whom and by when, was born.

Get professional advice

I have never been involved in a rebrand before and realised the importance of engaging specialists. You simply cannot afford to get it wrong.

With a new venture the last thing you want to be doing is fighting a rear guard action of damage limitation just because you made avoid able mistakes. Having the time was an issue, but the main concern was to ensure the rebrand was communicated in a pro fessional and clear way to all our clients and business partners.

Get the name right

Changing the name of a company is always a risk. Having been in business for over 20 years as Allfield Hove we did not want our clients and business partners to feel that the relationship and ethos of the business under the old name would be lost. Goodwill is easy to underestimate, and is very relevant to our business where our client relationships and trust underpin our success. We made the mistake of missing the obvious and after many hours and designs later, not to mention cost, we reverted to the obvious choice of using my initials. IEP Financial Limited was then adopted. The rationale and explanation for client communication was made easy and a message of ‘business as usual’ was easier to convey! It’s not just about the logo – clearly having a logo is important, but don’t let it take the focus away from the rebrand itself. Having your new corporate literature in place, having clear client communication, someone to focus on public relations and to articulate your rebrand message well to everyone needs to take priority.

As with the new IEP name change, we spent too long deliberating about a logo – yes, it is important, but it will not be a deal breaker in the eyes of existing and prospec tive clients.

Use technology

Getting your message across to people is of paramount importance. We made full use of technology to email our database of 7,000, issued personal client letters, and held a launch party followed by a launch lunch. Our YouTube video also attracted a great deal of interest – just search for IEP Financial. There were some mistakes made along the way, but without planning and engaging with professionals, the rebrand would not have been the success it was.

We are now heading into 2013 as IEP Financial Limited with great confidence with our new brand.