Dear Ueno: How do you rebrand without hurting people’s feelings?
Dear Ueno is an advice column for people who for some weird reason think we know what we’re doing. Read more about all this, or check out our old advice.
Luc Cleutjens, a product designer in Amsterdam, sent us this tweet:
#DearUeno How do you guys (re-)create brands without hurting people’s feelings?
Aaron Poe, Creative Director at Ueno SF, jumps at the opportunity to help answer this very tricky question:
Hey Luc — appreciate the thoughtful question.
There is no single approach. The short answer is simply having the emotional intelligence to orchestrate this delicate ballet of emotions. The long answer is much more layered, like an onion.
The short answer
When clients approach us for a rebrand, they already recognize the way they’re showing up in the world needs to improve. We’re here to help. It’s important to have a certain level of emotional intelligence and empathy because getting brand right is very, very hard these days.
Thanks to the internet our world is getting smaller, businesses are sprouting up everywhere, and design is everywhere too. Which can be good, but also has its fair share of unintended consequences. Like nothing being original anymore, or every SaaS company relying so much on illustration that it can feel like we’re living in a sea of sameness.
Imagine if the roles were reversed. You’re a founder or CEO and have built a company (or you’re building one from the ground up) and now you’re paying a hefty sum of capital to a group of people you don’t know all that well to solve a problem that you and your internal team have been unable to get right. There’s a lot of emotional baggage to be aware of. Ownership, ego and creative control just to name a few.
At Ueno, one of our values is “We’re all in this together.” Creating a unique and innovative outcome requires an empathetic design agency and trust on behalf of the client. It may sound cliché, but it requires a bit of quid pro quo to get it right. When the stars align, it blossoms into a partnership of shared responsibility. And when we all have skin in the game, everyone can look each other in the eye and speak more openly and honestly.
The role of designer is adapting. More and more I’ve witnessed design having a seat at the table, and businesses are understanding its real long-term value. If done well, design creates extreme brand loyalty, which is great for the tattoo industry.
The longer answer
Back to the onion. Ever notice when we cut an onion, our eyes become overwhelmed and we begin to cry? That’s what rebranding sometimes feels like.
But what if it didn’t have to be that way, Luc? What if someone figured out a way to avoid the painful experience of cutting an onion?
Well, someone already did.
You can cut the onion under a vent, light a candle before chopping, cut while placing your tongue on the roof of your mouth, cut while chewing gum, freeze the onion before cutting, soak the onion in water for 15 minutes, cut under running water, remove the onion’s core (where the roots are) before chopping, or you can wear tear-free onion goggles.
For rebranding projects, the best way to avoid tears, awkward silences and a roller coaster of emotions, is called strategy. When designers and clients work together to identify the brand strategy, the design outcome becomes harder to argue against and helps get everyone aligned.
Before we design anything for a company, we have a phase of discovery, research and analysis of the market they’re in. We’re not experts in everything, so we need to learn about their business challenges and goals to make anything meaningful. In fact, it may be one of the best parts about working at a design agency. We get to learn something new with each client engagement — whether it’s a SaaS, B2B, innovation, or lifestyle brand. Each organization is unique, with its own set of challenges.
Strategy informs design. Without strategy, design becomes focused only on aesthetics, which is entirely subjective and essentially a race to the bottom. For designers, strategy reveals the clients’ business needs and requirements, so we can begin to craft how they will live within their competitive space. The goal is to not only identify the who, what, when and why, but to come away with insights.
We make observations and we turn those into opportunities for our clients. A brand is not exclusively the name, logo, product or website. A brand is a holistic experience that people should feel connected to on an emotional level.
For a rebrand we’ll sit down with our client and ask a lot of questions, because we need to understand the culture of the company — what they do well and what legacy processes are holding them back. Within the workshop and discovery phase, our goal is to understand the customer problem their offering solves, the biggest challenges they’re facing, who their audience is and what they care about, and how they position themselves within the competitive landscape. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Trust me
Through meaningful client interaction and an open dialogue, we build a high level of trust with our clients which evolves into partnerships. Trust is the foundation of any successful partnership and we believe it’s the best way to drive innovation for businesses.
Clients, like other people, are more sensitive to some onions than others, and what works for one client won’t necessarily work for every client. From my experience, though, having a strategy (wearing tear-free goggles) is the most hassle-free, effective way of rebranding (and cutting an onion) without crying like a baby.
I hope that helps shed some light, Luc!
– Aaron
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