When a corporate brand has been designed, the hard work is far from over. There’s still the task of applying it across the organisation. So, asks Caroline Parry, how do you avoid taking your eye off the ball in the implementation process?

As the doors opened at the first rebranded branch of the Emirates NBD bank in Dubai in January, it marked the final milestone in a long journey to create the largest Middle Eastern financial services company.

Born out of a merger of the Emirates Bank and National Bank of Dubai, which began in 2007, the process of bringing together these two brands included rebranding 120 branches, 650 ATMs and its international network plus external and internal office spaces.

As the finishing touches were completed, it all seemed a long way from the initial conception of the new brand. Which is why, to complete the task, the new organisation had appointed brand implementation consultancy Endpoint to help turn the idea into reality.

“When there’s a merger, a rebrand is unavoidable,” says Gideon Wilkinson, founder of Endpoint, which acts as a third party managing every aspect of the implementation of a new brand. “Even if one organisation simply adopts the brand of the other,

the task of applying the brand to different sites, offices, items, customer touch points and cultures is complex.”

The scope and scale of the task in hand is often underestimated by organisations, adds Wilkinson, as they often fail to appreciate the reality of the implementation process. “All too often we see senior management focus enthusiastically on the front-end creative aspects of a new brand identity, a rebrand or even a simple brand refresh. But, when the glamorous bit is done, the truly critical phase, the physical implementation, becomes a ‘simple’ operational matter left to others.”

For this reason, says Lucy Unger, managing director of design and branding agency Fitch Design, it is essential that one person – either from the company or design agency - is appointed to act as the project co-ordinator, who liaises with all of the key project stakeholders. For major projects, perhaps those bringing multi-national companies together, she adds that appointing a third-party may be necessary.

According to one senior design industry source, clients often do not recognise the complexity of the task and hand responsibility to junior staff, who end up learning on the job. “It is a very serious thing for a company to undertake. I don’t understand why they think it is a minor task.”

Failing to ensure that experienced, centralised control is in place can cost a company between ten and 20 times the cost of the front-end design, Wilkinson estimates. “Put that in numbers to get a measure of what it means – if you pay £1 million to develop a new brand and visual identity, expect to pay up to £20 million to make it work as the creative consultants told you it would.”

To avoid this happening to Emirates NBD, which completed its roll-out in March, Endpoint carried out a comprehensive brand audit and scoping exercise, which was then presented to the board. Once it was accepted, the brand transition strategy began, starting with the formation of an in-house branding steering group and expert streams to concentrate on the project. This group should include the key project owners from chief executives and marketing directors through to IT, facilities and operations departments, which will be most affected by the changes.

The pre-rebrand audit is the vital first step in this process. Laura Haynes, director at branding and identity consultancy Appetite, explains: “There are two phases to an audit – one before the design and a second once the design is accepted.

“In the first instance, you need to know the existing brand in detail so you know how and where it is applied, there is no point designing anything unless you know where it is going to be used. You follow that with an implementation audit looking in detail at its applications, you have to do that in every department so you understand what materials and platforms it will be used on.

“It is key to understanding the kind of design you can apply but also to understanding the scope of what you are doing and developing a budget and timescale.”

It is also a great opportunity to understand where the brand is not working and “stop the rot” says Unger. “A logo often ends up being slapped on everything and you can end up with seven different forms, all of which are for the same thing. It can help to clear up existing wastage and design creep.”

Unger points to Fitch’s overhaul of Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, which was completed last December with a pilot of the retail concept just rolling out now. During the Soviet-era, it was the country’s only bank but since then the market has exploded and it has battled with increased competition and the negative connotations of its past. During the initial audit, 35 different letterheads were uncovered: this was reduced to five and it finally settled on 17 variants. “We reduced it by half,” she says. “It was a classic case of creep.”

As the audit begins, companies will have to start involving staff, certainly those in the divisions that will feed into the audit so they can answer questionnaires and collect the necessary samples.

“The internal communications behind this must be carefully planned as this kind of activity can unsettle employees,” explains Haynes. “There should be a six to eight month lead-in for this but it is often not considered enough during the transition. You don’t want to lose people on the way or allow them to create their own stories about why the change is happening.”

Unger adds that it is important to have one person invested in the role of communicating the story behind the changes, and setting milestones that are stuck to, to help people to understand what is happening and why. “People find change uncomfortable, partly from inconvenience but also fear. It is important to being them along with the story so they can help make it work.”

Digital and brand agency Rufus Leonard worked on the rebrand of Lloyds TSB and Bank of Scotland to create Lloyds Banking Group, which was completed in such a tight timescale that the agency had just five weeks to redesign and rebrand over 50 pieces of literature. Freddie Baveystock, the agency’s managing consultant, says employees outside of the brand team are not living and breathing the strategy so need help getting up to speed.

“To support the Bank of Scotland rebrand, we created a brand immersion session to help client and other agency teams understand the brand strategy and story. To date this has proved incredibly useful as an engagement tool and a constant reference point.”

Once the design language has been agreed, the focus shifts to consistently applying it across all platforms, which now can stretch from giveaway pens and signage through to online and mobile. Brand implementation consultancy Clockwork Marketing was so concerned about getting this right during its 2007 rebrand of Delta Airways, it produced every piece of graphic material in one factory to maintain absolute consistency of colour.

“The brand has to look the same everywhere it is shown,” says Rod Wheeler, the founder of Clockhouse Marketing. “One of the many challenges today is to make all the electronic-based visuals look the same. Not easy when, for instance, two monitors at an airport may not have the same colour strength meaning your brand colour may look point on one monitor and dark red on another.”

In addition to consistency, says John McWilliams, director and founding partner at Brandpool, which recently completed a major rebrand for Southeastern Trains (see box), timing is key. “The multitude of media channels, audiences and touch points enable you to structure the launch of a campaign over a number of stages, gradually building awareness. You might start with an email teaser campaign for one audience, and then build towards a bigger reveal with outdoor posters. Again, all of this requires a high degree of planning and co-ordination.”

Rebranding exercises must be tightly managed and controlled if they are going to be implemented efficiently and, crucially, on budget. However, any company considering launching this process must be clear from the start what it is hoping to achieve by going through what will be a major upheaval internally and a risk externally.

“Clearly establish the objectives. Define exactly what is involved. Know what you can afford and what the return will be,” advises Wheeler. “Often companies change brand on a whim or without really researching the benefits. It can be very expensive not just to the budget but to the brand.”

Southeastern Trains

The rebrand of Southeastern Trains took 18 months to implement – across all touch points from timetables to TV advertising – following a six-month design process.

The brief was to create a strong brand that the target market would associate with; that would influence and motivate stakeholders and staff; and that would engage the media and politicians.

It developed the Make a Connection concept – which aims to promote the technical advantages of its services and create an emotional bond – to sit at the centre of its communications themes.

The implementation strategy began in May 2008 with posters at landmark sites, internal launch and communications, online refresh, stakeholder communications kit. This was followed that September by an integrated ad campaign (TV, radio, consumer press, industry press, posters, direct marketing, e-marketing).

Don’t forget social media

It is crucial not to forget social media during a rebrand exercise, says Paul Harrison, founder of social media specialist Carve Consulting.

It’s not just about making sure the new logo and branding are online, or that customers can still find you, but about protecting your organisation’s name. A great free tool for managing this process is www.knowem.com, which searches for brand name availability.

When it comes to branding ‘owned’ social networks – YouTube and Twitter pages and so on – the branding options are very limited. The bio needs to be tightly crafted and the logo, which needs to fit into a 200x200 pixel square, should be replaced by an icon or visual ident if it does not work on all of the different devices it can be viewed on.

Nothing looks as unconsidered - or as out of touch - as a default branded background, and as part of the rebrand you should create optimised templates for Twitter and YouTube at a minimum.