Rebranding: How This Watch Company Nailed Their Rebranding Strategy

Introduction: The Art of Rebranding in Business

Hey, how are you doing? Okay, periodically, you’ll see a large well known company goes through a rebrand and you hear many people say something about the ludicrous costs associated to go through this rebrand process. Now, these companies would have gone through a cost analysis process and wouldn’t proceed in doing this rebrand if they couldn’t see a return on profit.

Understanding the Need for Rebranding

But what people forget is that as business grows, the target audience demographics actually changes and equally do trends in the market.

Case Study: The Evolution of Next

For example, there is this retailer in the UK called Next. They were originally founded in 1864. Originally called Hepworth’s, which was a tailoring business.
Now, Next really shook up the retail industry in the 80s, as they did a massive rebrand. In their shops, they had conveyor belts with hundreds of suits going around in circles. It was quite a marvel to see. Really felt like going to an adventure and at that time they also introduced a women’s range of suits.

Now their mission statement then was ‘the total concepts’ look which actually encouraged customers to mix and match within a style which resulted in their customers buying more Items than they initially had planned. They have obviously had some down periods.

However every now and then they go through this rebrand to reach new audiences. I suppose you could say that’s like Ikea, they follow a similar mission statement to next of the 80s. And if you’ve ever been to Ikea, you know you end up buying considerably more than what you initially went in there for.

So let’s discuss rebranding. Shall we start?

Creating a Rebranding Strategy: A Hypothetical Scenario

Now let’s pretend that we own a luxury watch company that’s been around for 40 years. We have a good client base, but want to reach new audiences. Our client base is actually getting older. And as a business, we need to look for, look at the longer term picture.

Defining the Target Audience: Identifying New Customers

One of the first things you need to do is actually start defining your target audience. Now, despite having a good client base, our watch company needs to expand its reach to new audiences. And this is one of the first steps in doing a marketing campaign is to actually define the audience.

Developing Brand Personas: Crafting the Ideal Customer Profile

This may include younger professionals or luxury consumers who are interested in high quality stylish watches.

Now, this is where we would create various personas, which are pretty much fictitious characters that would be your ideal customer. Adding such things such as age, income, gender.

Anyway, it’d probably be best if I give an example. So, let’s say for example, so we’ll, we’ll give this person a name and we’ll call him David.

Now we go to the age. He’s 40 years old. His occupation is investment banking. His annual income is 200, 000 plus. Education level is a master’s degree, so he has an MBA. His marital status, he’s married with two children. Location is New York City. Now we look at the psychographic information. So when we talk about that, it’s, it’s what his sort of values and what he appreciates.

So we know that our ideal customer values quality and craftsmanship, appreciates luxury and the finer things in life. He strives for success and achievement, enjoys networking and building relationships and is competitive and likes to stand out from the crowd. Then we look into the behavioural information.

Now, Dave owns several luxury items, including high-end cars and designer clothing. He likes to invest in the stock market and other financial instruments. He attends business conferences and networking events regularly, reads financial publications, and follows the stock market trends. He has an extremely busy schedule and values punctuality.

So now we have a sort of behavioural information understanding of him. We then look at his goals and motivation. He wants to project an image of success and sophistication. He appreciates the time and effort that goes into crafting a luxury watch, values quality and durability in a watch and sees luxury watches as a symbol of status and accomplishment.

Now you can see here where we’ve linked his behavioural information and brought it into his goals and motivation and that’s absolutely key. Now he’s going to have some elements of what we call pain points and challenges.

Because he’s very busy, he has limited time to shop and research luxury watches. He may feel overwhelmed by the number of luxury watch brands available, and he wants to ensure the luxury watch that he buys is worth the investment, because we know he’s into investments.

What would this person’s communication preferences be based on his behavioural information, goals and motivation, pain points, and challenges?

He prefers to receive information about luxury watches through targeted advertisements, email, newsletters, and social media ads. He trusts recommendations from other successful businessmen and financial advisors.He values personalised service and attention when making high-end purchases.

Now you would create this persona, and then you would start looking at other personas that are included with those elements that I mentioned. Now we have, say, a whole range.

We’ve got Dave, Lucy, and whoever, Tom.

We now need to look at the brand itself, and this is the rebranding exercise.

Reinventing Brand Identity: Aligning with New Audience Expectations

So we’ve got to say, okay, we need to develop a new brand identity that reflects the value of the new target audience. However, we have to still maintain the brand’s heritage and reputation because you don’t want to lose the clients that you already have. Now, this may include creating a new brand’s name like Nested, a new logo, maybe bringing it up to date and messaging that speaks to the style, quality, and craftsmanship of our watches. So that could be crafted with precision, worn with pride.

Now you’re creating these elements, so now it’s time to sort of revamp our website to showcase our new brand identity and provide a seamless user experience for new potential customers.

So now we’re reaching for a younger audience. The website should be modern, visually appealing, and feature the high-end quality images of the watches- maybe having videos and the likes of that. Now, we’ve spoken a lot about content and content marketing over various episodes.

Embracing Content Marketing: Engaging the Audience through Quality Content

So here in this situation, we have to create extremely valuable content that speaks to this new target audience and showcases the watches in particular.
And this has to include blog posts, social media content, and videos that highlight the style and the features of the watches. Now we come down to sort of how we are going to reach these people and we’ll utilise social media advertising.

Leveraging Social Media and Influencer Marketing: Expanding Reach

Now, it’s not as simple as just saying I want to do Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, or Snapchat, because they may not be reaching your specific demographic or your persona that you’ve chosen.

So this is where we would actually do a little bit of study and start looking at each social media element and what are the demographics because they’re the demographics we need to target while setting up our social media advertising. However, this may include sponsoring specific posts that are already happening or definitely influencer marketing.

If we choose the right people to wear the watch and they’ve got the target audience that we need, well they become the influencer and the person that’s recommending the item to our persona. You know, we can see that Dave has very little time and this is where we need to start building our email marketing.

Focusing on Email Marketing: Building a Customer Database

So build an email list of potential customers within this new target. And this could be through landing pages that work across our social media advertising. We need to get their names and addresses and all details. that we can possibly get to start promoting our items to them. And this could be done through specific promotions or discounts that are currently available for our luxury watches.

Utilising Public Relations: Building Hype Around the Brand

Now, being that we have a heritage of luxury watches, we can utilise public relations for the best. So we have to build the relationship with the influencers and media outlets that appeal to our new target audience to generate buzz around our new rebranded, not rebranded watches, but rebrands of our business.

And this may include securing product reviews, interviews, and definitely press coverage. You know, when I was working within the crypto world, we used PR for major announcements such as Forbes and Business Week and the likes of that.

And we mustn’t forget events and partnerships.

Hosting Events and Partnerships: Creating Memorable Experiences

Let’s host a few events that will appeal to new target audiences and showcase the watches.

This may include partnering with fashion retailers, hosting pop up shops and sponsoring events that attract younger professionals or luxury consumers.

Ensuring Exceptional Customer Experience: The Key to Success

The key here is that we really have to produce a fantastic customer experience that people will fall in love with. You know, we need to ensure that the customer experience is exceptional from day one to finish.

So, this includes providing high-quality customer services, fast shipping, and a hassle-free return policy. You think we’re selling a luxury watch and with luxury comes service. You don’t go to a five-star hotel and the concierge is rather flippant “Oh, what do you want?” They will give you a service that’s beyond the standard service you would get if you went into, say, a two-star hotel.

Conclusion: Rebranding as a Strategic Investment for Growth

While rebranding may seem like a costly endeavour, it could be a really smart investment in reaching new audiences and expanding our watch business in the long term.

By defining a new target audience and implementing strategies like developing new brand identity, revamping the website, and using targeted marketing efforts, our luxury watch company can successfully reach a new audience such as Dave or David, and provide him with the quality, style, and craftsmanship that he seeks, as well as all the other new customers that come on board.

Closing Remarks and Call to Action

Now, I hope you enjoyed our little watch adventure, and that’s all we have time for today. Remember to follow, subscribe for some more tips, and we’ll talk again. Bye bye now.